According to David, "Phishing scams are different than benign spam schemes that try to sell the user something or get them to open a link to an undesirable site. Phishing e-mails don't normally contain virus payloads, but SpyWare such as keystroke loggers and password traps may be downloaded when e-mail attachments from the phishing perpetrators are opened."

The ability for businesses to prove and protect online identities is a major challenge. Password traps and fishing attempts are on the rise as hackers successfully impersonate trusted companies to collect personal information, such as Social Security or credit card numbers, from unsuspecting consumers.

Windows NT even forces users to press the Ctrl-Alt-Del key combination that reboots the system before logging on, just to make sure that the password dialog box that pops up is really Windows NT and not a nefarious password trap.