Computer Term (II)

Phish, or phishing

The act of sending an e-mail to a user, falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

The word phishing comes from the analogy that Internet scammers are using e-mail lures to fish for passwords and financial data from the sea of Internet users. Since hackers have a tendency to replacing "f" with "ph" the term phishing was derived.

Extract from www.webopedia.com