Meaning of Phishing

they try to hook as many people as the can with the bait. That is why it is called phishing.

"Phishing" usually refers to special form of spam: sending a lot of people a forged fficial-looking e-mail from a service they might be using (e.g., a bank or eBay). The e-mail gives some excuse for why you must urgently ontact that service, and conveniently contains a link, supposedly to he service's website -- but actually to a website controlled by the attacker. If the victim follows the link, he gets an official-looking ogin screen asking for his name and password... Once the attacker gets hese, he can log in by himself to the real website and wreak havoc in he victim's account.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defines Phishing "it involves Internet fraudsters who send spam or pop-up messages to lure personal information (credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security number, passwords, or other sensitive information) from unsuspecting victims." 

Wikipedia has a good summary of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/phishingalrt.htm 

    =>How Not to Get Hooked by a ‘ Phishing’ Scam

Phishing is any form of information gathering; generally associated with criminal activity. It is the process of getting private information. Phishing started making its heyday in the 1970's when the the first hackers started appearing. In order the break into secure networks (back then it was mostly just phone phreaking), hackers would have to go phishing for information.

 The easiest way to go phishing is to dumpster dive. The perpetrator goes through the garbage looking for useful information (secret codes, manuals, etc...). Another type of phishing can occur on the phone. A conversation might go like this : 

Random computer administrator: Hello, my name is Toby, how may I help you?

Phisher:  Hey Toby, this is Jonathon Doe over in accounting, I forgot my password, can you reset it for me?

 Kevin Mitnick (famous hacker) was a real pro at this - he called it social engineering. The modern variation is of course a fraudulant email asking for information; or in many cases a completely spoofed web page that tricks you into giving up your valuable private information.

"Phishing" refers to the practice of sending [your] browser a false page -- through DNS poisoning or other mechanisms -- whereby you enter sensitive personal information that is subsequently sent to the perpetrator(s) of the phishing attack, and not the legitimate party or entity to whom you intended. the "ph" substitution for "fishing" comes from the same substitution for [phone] "phreaking", i.e. instead of "freaking", which is the practice of manipulating the PSTN for nefarious purposes, to evade tolls and/or other charges, or.. simply for the sheer thrill of it....

Phishing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

Pharming (instead of "farming")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharming