what is a phishing website?

Question

help

Answer 1

a website that steals your information and uses it mainly for spam and possible fraud

to check if a website is a phishing website go to:
http://www.phishtank.com/

Answer 2

In computing, phishing is a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out using email or an instant message,[1] although phone contact has been used as well[2]. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, and technical measures.

The first recorded mention of phishing is on the alt.online-service.america-online Usenet newsgroup on January 2, 1996,[3] although the term may have appeared even earlier in the print edition of the hacker magazine 2600.[4] The term phishing is a variant of fishing[5], probably influenced by phreaking,[6][7] and alludes to the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to "fish" for users' financial information and passwords. The word may also be linked to leetspeak, in which ph is a common substitution for f.[8] The popular theory that it is a portmanteau of password harvesting[9] is an example of folk etymology.

Answer 3

Phishing is a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out using email or an instant message,[1] although phone contact has been used as well[2]. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, and technical measures.

Answer 4

Phishing(fish´ing) (n.) 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, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information. For example, 2003 saw the proliferation of a phishing scam in which users received e-mails supposedly from eBay claiming that the user’s account was about to be suspended unless he clicked on the provided link and updated the credit card information that the genuine eBay already had. Because it is relatively simple to make a Web site look like a legitimate organizations site by mimicking the HTML code, the scam counted on people being tricked into thinking they were actually being contacted by eBay and were subsequently going to eBay’s site to update their account information. By spamming large groups of people, the “phisher” counted on the e-mail being read by a percentage of people who actually had listed credit card numbers with eBay legitimately

Answer 5

A website pretending to be another website.

Such as a website that looks like Your Banks Website or a eBay Store and the owner is "fishing" for Your credit card's secret number and account details.

PPL that send You mail and direct You at their site - the site looks like one You normally use - Here they try to bill You or to get account details - They "phish" for info to get Your money.

The "ph" instead of "f" is AFAIK because very early ripoff scams were about tele"ph"one fees. But I might be mistaken about the this being the reason for the "ph".

Answer 6

They "phish" your private numbers by pretending to be a company. Like if you use ebay you might get and email saying that a power outage happened and they need your credit card numbers again. They make the email look just like an ebay email to trick you.

Answer 7

A website that phishes through your cookies looking for information to exploit. Like emails addresses to spam, ect.....

Answer 8

It tells you how to protect yourself from Internet fraudulent schemes, "fishing" for your actual name, birth date, Social Security number, the term for this is "phishing" Phony ads are posted or pop up to get you to think they are real, like saying they are Wells Fargo or Century 21 what ever, and they have copied the logos and all perfectly, you cant tell from the real thing! So the thing is don't fall for it! Only contact your known and trusted sites with your crucial info.

Answer 9

It is a copy of a real website for example paypal or a bank's website
that when your information is entered is used to access your real account now this person has all the information they need to make your life hell always check the URL BAR to make sure you are where you want to be

I once received an email telling me I needed to update my info at paypal
the thing is I don't have a paypal account
just for kicks I decided to do some detective work
the link they wanted me to click on to 'update my account' was some website with a Germany exstension www.blahblahblah.DE
true story
imagine if I had entered in my bank account numbers

Answer 10

a phishing website is a website reported for selling items that they paid for, but never got, inother words a phishing website is a scam url