phish

verb

ˈfish 

phished; phishing; phishes

transitive verb

: to trick (an Internet user) into revealing personal or confidential information which can then be used illicitly

"Typically how it happens is somebody would break into a crypto exchange, like Coinbase, for example," [Alan Mislove, professor of computer science at Northeastern] says. "But another common way is that the hacker would attempt to phish users to trick them into giving up their password."

—Tanner Stening

also : to acquire (an Internet user's personal or confidential information) through trickery (such as the use of deceptive email messages or websites)

… cold calling is … a way scammers can phish information from consumers.

—L'Observateur (La Place, Louisiana)

Examples of phish in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Nevertheless, Khudaverdyan continued to run his phone-unlocking business by creating various ways to phish T-Mobile employees. —Michael Kan, PCMAG, 2 Aug. 2022

Spam texts can be more than annoying, as increasingly tech-forward approaches can contain malware or phish for personal information. —Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 13 May 2022

But what if someone found a way to phish passwords using a malicious site that didn’t contain these telltale signs? —Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 21 Mar. 2022

Throughout the first year of the pandemic, Trickbot’s controllers used COVID-19 lures to phish for victims. —Lee Mathews, Forbes, 31 Jan. 2022

But even when celebrities request that bank accounts not be shared in public, scammers can take advantage of a big name’s buzz to phish by contacting users directly. —Alexander Onukwue, Quartz, 24 Nov. 2021

Word History

Etymology

respelling of fish entry 2, probably after phreaker and phreaking

First Known Use

1996, in the meaning defined above