phishing

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The Word of the Day for August 17 is:

phishing   \FISH-ing\   noun 
     : a scam by which an e-mail user is duped into revealing personal or 
confidential information which the scammer can use illicitly 

Example sentence:
     The widespread use of electronic banking and financial transactions has 
prompted the FTC to crack down on cyber crimes, such as phishing.

Did you know?
     "Phishing" is one of the many new computer-related terms that have found 
their way into the general lexicon over the past decade or so. Its "ph" 
spelling is influenced by an earlier word for an illicit act: "phreaking." 
Phreaking involves fraudulently using an electronic device to avoid paying for 
telephone calls, and its name is suspected of being a shortening of "phone 
freak." A common phishing scam involves sending e-mails that appear to come 
from banks requesting recipients to verify their accounts by typing personal 
details, such as credit card information, into a Web site that has been 
disguised to look like the real thing. Such scams can be thought of as 
"fishing" for naive recipients.






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