What Does Phishing Mean?

Actually, the word comes from the original fishing, and the meaning is quite similar. While you are fishing you extract fish from the sea, but in the case of phising, you extract information from the internet.

This term appeared for the first time in the mid nineties in America Online, when criminal hackers, also known as crackers, started using social engineering techniques for acquiring private information from users.

For example, a cracker sent a serious looking email or a notification through instant messaging, telling the user to input its username and password for whatever purpose. If the victim was a basic user, it was most probable that she or he would fall for the trap, giving away his private information to the attacker. It would be later used for a series of illegal schemes, like software piracy or spamming.

Although America Online managed to reduce the cases of phising by a huge percentage, they still exist in our days. They simply adapted to new techniques.

The Evolution of Phising

Nowadays, the most common kind of phising is through email. Since the end of the AOL phising days, crackers found that there were more lucrative sources of money: the costumers of online banking and online payment services.

The method is quite simple. They find the basic information of an user (email account, name and surname) and send them an email posing as the costumer support department of a bank or a common online payment service, like Paypal.

Thanks to statistics, if they sent one hundred email to different persons, at least one should use Paypal or have a bank account in that determined financial entity. The victim could find himself lured into the trap, clicking on the link that appeared in the mail. The web page that loaded appeared as valid as the original, eliminating any doubt the user may had about it.

Fortunately, several companies have started to make anti phishing software that is capable of knowing if you are the potential victim of a crime. An anti phishing tool looks for determined things that are common in phising, alerting the user of any danger, especially from new kind of phising. For example, it has recently evolved to a new level: spear phising. Somehow, phisers have found how to determine what kind of financial service a victim uses. With this information, they don’t need to send hundreds of emails waiting for someone to fall, you can even try registry cleaner download and spyware removers that can help you prevent avoid such threats protecting your PC. They attack a specific consumer, knowing that there is a greater chance of luring him.

Even more, they have used the unconscious dread that exists for the Internal Revenue Service to lure more users into their evil schemes. They send emails looking as the IRS, asking for sensitive data like bank accounts, usernames and passwords.

Once this technique becomes common knowledge, no one knows what new method these criminals may create.

Continue to: What are Anti Phishing Solution