Where did the term phishing come from?
The term phishing (FISH-ing) was coined because thieves are fishing for your personal financial information. They send out thousands of lures and hook only a few victims. The “ph” comes from a common hacking term. The first type of hacking was called “phreaking.” In the mid-1990s, America Online accounts were some of the first hacked accounts and were called “phish.” These phish were treated as a form of currency where scammers could trade phish for hacking software.
