Phishing

A cyberattack strategy that is the equivalent of impersonation for the purpose of stealing access to confidential information or funds.

Phishing describes the broad digital impersonation strategy where a person pretends to be someone else to steal users’ personal information. Often, the impersonated individual is the representative of a highly regarded company, so unaware users usually provide confidential access information such as usernames and passwords. As a result, the user’s private social media or bank account is exploited by the impersonator, leading to theft of information or money.

Phishing is traditional to emails, so many users who have lost access to their accounts or money due to phishing clicked a link sent to their mail. Such a link would direct the user to a website where they would provide their access information and temporarily lose access to their account(s) while the ‘phisher’ steals whatever they want.