Phishing
attempt to trick a person into revealing information
Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam in which attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware. Phishing can be used for credential theft, session hijacking, malware delivery, or command execution. Some attacks transparently relay authentication to a legitimate site, allowing the attacker to capture credentials and authenticated sessions. Phishing is a common initial-access method, and Large language models can automate personalized phishing at low cost.
Common forms include general email phishing, targeted spear phishing and whaling, voice phishing (vishing), and SMS phishing (smishing). Other forms use QR codes or relay authentication through an adversary-in-the-middle.
Measures to prevent or reduce the impact of phishing attacks include legislation, user education, public awareness, and technical security measures.
Types
Email phishing
Phishing attacks, often delivered via email, attempt to trick individuals into giving away sensitive information or login credentials. General phishing is sent broadly, whereas spear phishing targets a particular person or group. The goal of the attacker can vary, with common targets including financial institutions, email and cloud productivity providers, and streaming services.
“Phishing” enters the record as attempt to trick a person into revealing information. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Phishing, attempt and trick can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Phishing” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Phishing, attempt and trick provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q135005. The Library of Congress control number is sh2005003206. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Phishing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.