Have you been a victim of phishing?

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Have you been a victim of phishing?

Many words have been added to the English language from the birth of the Internet. Some of these words have been created from the basis of something in existence and others do not seem to be related at all. The resent topic in the Internet world is phishing, a new type of identity theft that is done directly over the Internet without its victims knowing they are being misled. This issue has been a concern of all who are involved. The biggest worry is how can this be prevented?

Definition

When you think of the word phishing, without seeing it spelled you think of a boat, a pole and maybe a relaxing time on the lake, but this may be just the opposite. The word phishing when used in the context of the Internet is a term to describe how con artists are now using the Internet to learn personal information. Where did this word come from? There are a few different ideas from where the spelling came about, first it is believed to have been influenced by the term “password harvesting fishing” but with a spin on the name, much like many other terms used in the technology world. The other idea thought to have influenced the origin of the word, is a man by the name of Brian Phish, who is believed to have been the pioneer of identity theft thru the theft of credit card numbers back in the 1980s. Not all are sure whether Brian Phish is fictional, but this identity is used to unify hackers (Phishing – From Wikipedia).

The definition of phishing taken from an online dictionary is “the act of sending an email 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 ide...

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