phish

verb

ˈfish

phished; phishing; phishes

: 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

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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