Phishing

This term is made up from the words “pass­word” and “fishing”. Attackers use phishing to obtain con­fi­den­tial data from unsus­pecting Internet users. These might for instance involve access data for your e-banking facility or account infor­ma­tion of online shops. Per­pe­tra­tors abuse their vic­tims’ good faith and help­ful­ness by pur­porting to be, say, an employee of a trust­worthy finan­cial institution.

There are a variety of other vari­a­tions such as Vishing (voice phishing or phone phishing), Smishing (SMS / text phishing) and QR phishing in addi­tion to classic phishing via e-mail.

See also: Man-in-the-Middle (MitM)