phishing

British  

/ ˈfɪʃɪŋ /

noun

1. the practice of using fraudulent e-mails and copies of legitimate websites to extract financial data from computer users for purposes of identity theft

---

Etymology

Origin of phishing

C21: from fishing in the sense of catching the unwary by offering bait; computer-hacker slang often replaces f with ph

Explanation

Phishing is a scam in which someone emails a victim intending to trick them into revealing bank numbers, passwords, or other sensitive information. Phishing messages often appear to come from reputable companies. Phishing is a common cybercrime involving fraudulent messages that look very real. The person receiving the email may believe it's from their bank, for example, asking them to confirm their social security number or credit card details. With this information, the attacker can move to identity theft, installing malware, or stealing money directly from the victim's account. Hackers reportedly started using this term around 1995, influenced by phreak, a slang word for someone who hacks into a phone system.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

phishing

The ads, which came as paper mailers — in contrast to soon-to-be popular malware, pop-up ads and phishing emails — were decidedly less invasive and easily ignored.

From Salon ● Aug. 21, 2026

Is this a phishing scam — or am I suddenly popular?

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 10, 2026

In a letter to Meta, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said the feature could lead to an increase in online fraud, phishing, digital arrest scams and impersonation attacks, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

From Barron's ● Jul. 2, 2026

Sam Little, a 35-year-old former contestant of BBC show The Traitors, revealed last week he had lost £40,000 in life savings to a phishing scam.

From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2026

Once in a while I’d leak stuff about phishing scams.

From "Burning Blue" by Paul Griffin