Hackers commonly take advantage of these sites to attack people using them at their workplace, homes, or in public in order to take personal and security information that can affect the user or company (if in a workplace environment). Hackers could create a clone of a website and tell you to enter personal information, which is then emailed to them. Phishing is a continual threat, and the risk is even larger in social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Many websites have now created secondary tools for applications, like maps for games, but they should be clearly marked as to who wrote them, and users should not use the same passwords anywhere on the internet. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.

Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to deceive users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies. Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Phishing emails may contain links to websites that are infected with malware.

Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, banks, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure unsuspecting victims. The word is a neologism created as a homophone of fishing due to the similarity of using a bait in an attempt to catch a victim.

Phishing is the attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Also note that although the URL of the bank's webpage appears to be legitimate, the hyperlink would actually be pointed at the phisher's webpage. Note the misspelling of the words received and discrepancy as recieved and discrepency. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing confidential information by 'confirming' it at the phisher's website. An example of a phishing email, disguised as an official email from a (fictional) bank.

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