phishing
pp. Creating a replica of an existing web page to fool a user into submitting personal, financial, or password data.
Other Forms
Examples
2003
Tips on how to avoid the Internet scam known as phishing.

- If you receive an unexpected e-mail saying your account will be shut down unless you confirm your billing information, do not reply or click any links in the e-mail body.

- Before submitting financial information through a Web site, look for the "lock" icon on the browser's status bar. It means your information is secure during transmission.

- If you are uncertain about the information, contact the company through an address or telephone number you know to be genuine.

- If you unknowingly supplied personal or financial information, contact your bank and credit card company immediately.

- Suspicious e-mail can be forwarded to [email protected], and complaints should be filed with the state attorney general's office or through the FTC at www.ftc.gov.
—Kevin Pang, “'Phishers' widen their catch of Web identity victims,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 2003
2003
Phishing is the term coined by hackers who imitate legitimate companies in e-mails to entice people to share passwords or credit-card numbers. Recent victims include Charlotte's Bank of America, Best Buy and eBay, where people were directed to Web pages that looked nearly identical to the companies' sites.

The term had its coming out this week when the FBI called phishing the "hottest, and most troubling, new scam on the Internet." The name appears to have no connection to the band Phish, an FBI spokesman said.
—Andrew Shain, “Phishing to steal your information,” Charlotte Observer, July 25, 2003
1996 (earliest)
It used to be that you could make a fake account on AOL so long as you had a credit card generator. However, AOL became smart. Now they verify every card with a bank after it is typed in. Does anyone know of a way to get an account other than phishing?
—mk590, “AOL for free?,” alt.2600, January 28, 1996
Notes
He decides to check out London first. He chooses a certain pay phone located in Waterloo Station. This particular pay phone is popular with the phone-phreaks network because there are usually people walking by at all hours who will pick it up and talk for a while. …

Fraser begins to phreak around, as the phone phreaks say.
—Ron Rosenbaum, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” Esquire, October 01, 1971