Phished adjective

'"We arrested a 21-year-old man on suspicion of phishing, a scam where someone sends out emails purporting to come from a bank, on this occasion Smile," said an NHTCU spokeswoman …'

PRESS ASSOCIATION 29TH APRIL 2004

'Phishers send emails which purport to be official notices from banks or retailers saying that an account needs to be updated or informing about a new product on sale …'

THE GUARDIAN 30TH APRIL 2004

' … check your bank's website for more information on Internet security. If you think you have been phished, contact your bank immediately.'

STRAITS TIMES, SINGAPORE 29TH MAY 2004

'Twelve arrested for laundering phished funds … '

NEWS.ZDNET.CO.UK 5TH MAY 2004

'Every internet user in Britain must have received a phish by now.'

THE GUARDIAN 3RD JUNE 2004

In recent months, a major new Internet crime wave has emerged. An increasing number of consumers are being conned into divulging financial information to fraudsters via the practice of phishing. An official-looking e-mail, allegedly from a bank, ISP, etc, is sent to potential victims, requesting updated personal information on some pretext or other, such as technical problems or internal accounting errors. Via a link in the e-mail message, the user is then directed to a web page which asks for financial information. The fake web page can look convincingly similar to a legitimate source, since any HTML page on the web can easily be copied and modified as necessary.

British police recently estimated that phishingcrimes cost UK banks in the region of £60 million

British police recently estimated that phishing crimes cost UK banks in the region of £60 million during 2003, and in the United States the economic toll was even worse, costing American banks and credit card companies an estimated $1.2 billion.

The noun phishing typically appears in compound phrases such as a phishingscam/e-mail, and the countable nounphisher has been coined to refer to perpetrators of the crime. There are two phish homographs: a transitive verb usually used in the passive as in you've beenphished! – i.e. 'you have fallen victim to aphishingscam' – and a countable noun most commonly used to refer to the e-mail that triggers the deception. A participle adjective phished is also quite common, as in phishede-mail/site/data.

Background – phishing and phish

The term phishing has been around in computer hacker culture since the mid-1990s, where it originally referred more generally to the practice of acquiring password information in order to infringe security barriers. Its use specifically in the context of Internet-based financial crimes is more recent. The word is derived from a deliberate misspelling of fish in its verbal sense of trying to obtain information. The analogy of 'trying to catch (a fish)' is often carried over as well. For instance, the use of phish as a noun to refer to the e-mail which tricks the victim is related to the idea of fish as 'bait'. Discussions of the practice often also include fishing references such as phishinglines, a phishingexpedition, get caught/hooked by aphish.

sheeple

noun [plural]

people who are easily persuaded and tend to follow what other people do

'I hope I can pass on a few thoughts … to encourage people to see that they are living in a conditioned illusion and we can change it any time we want. We can be people and not sheeple.'

DAVID ICKE IN A DISCUSSION OF HIS NEW SCI-FI CHANNEL SHOW JUNE 2002

The term sheeple is often used to describe people who act in direct reaction to saturation advertising, going out and buying the 'must-have' fashions and fads of the moment

The term sheeple, which first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1984, has been used increasingly in the last couple of years due to the enhanced marketing potential afforded by online and satellite channel media. It is often used to describe people who act in direct reaction to saturation advertising, going out and buying the 'must-have' fashions and fads of the moment. Sheeple is also used more generally to refer to people who don't tend to think for themselves but basically follow the crowd or believe what the media tells them. In a June 2002 Guardian newspaper article, it was used in reference to individuals who had taken part in a survey resulting in the claim that 'four out of five Americans had said they would give up some freedom for greater security'.

The citation at the beginning of the article is from an individual who is a rather extreme believer in alternative ways of thinking, but his use of sheeple is the same, i.e. people should think for themselves, whereas sheeple's thoughts and reactions are based on what they have been led to believe by others.

Background – sheeple

The plural noun sheeple is what is technically referred to as a blend, a combination of the words sheep and people. A blend is a new word formed from parts of two (or possibly more) words in such a way that it cannot be further analyzed into morphemes (i.e. the smallest meaningful components of words). Other more familiar examples are brunch (breakfast and lunch) and chunnel (channel and tunnel). The concept of a blend (also called a portmanteau word) is nothing new. In Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass, written in 1872, Alice asks Humpty Dumpty to explain the words of a poem and he replies: 'Well slithy means lithe and slimy. Lithe is the same as active. You see it's like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.

ubersexual

noun [countable]

a heterosexual male who is both confident and compassionate and has a strong interest in good causes and principles

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