noun. The act of sending email that falsely claims to be from a legitimate organization. This is usually combined with a threat or request for information: for example, that an account will close, a balance is due, or information is missing from an account. The email will ask the recipient to supply confidential information, such as bank account details, PINs or passwords; these details are then used by the owners of the website to conduct fraud.

noun. The act of circumventing security with an alias.

verb. Present participle of phish.

"Spawns of phishing threats such as ´spear phishing´ - highly targeted and coordinated attacks at a specific organisation or individual designed to extract critical data - increased more than ten-fold since January of this year alone."

phish  phisher  spearphishing  

dishing  fishing  wishing  

7-mm  about-the  application-layer  band-pass  blowing-up  

spoofing