Phishing is a fraud in which attackers impersonate a trusted brand or person, by email, text or a fake website, to trick people into handing over passwords, payment details or money.
A phishing campaign usually combines a lure — an email, text message (smishing), call or ad that copies a bank, delivery company, platform or employer — with a fake login or payment page on a lookalike domain or a compromised website. The aim is to collect credentials or card details, install malware or persuade the victim to send money.
Phishing is illegal in most countries and is prohibited by reputable hosts, registrars and email providers. It is also one of the categories of DNS abuse on which ICANN-accredited registrars and registries must act when they have actionable evidence.
In practice
For a brand being impersonated, the fastest results usually come from reporting the phishing page to its host, the domain registrar and any CDN in front of it, and asking browser and search safety services to flag it, with screenshots, URLs and proof that the brand is yours. The FTC advises consumers to forward phishing emails to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (reportphishing@apwg.org) and report attempts at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Enforced SPF, DKIM and DMARC make your own domain much harder to spoof.
Source: FTC Consumer Advice — How to recognize and avoid phishing scams ↗
Related removals
- Website takedown — $3,000 per site, pay on success
- Brand protection — Custom engagement, pay on success
Related terms
- Website takedown — A website takedown is the removal of an unlawful website through the lawful channels of its hosting provider, domain registrar, CDN and search engines.
- Abuse report — An abuse report is a complaint to a hosting provider, domain registrar, CDN or email provider that its service is being used for phishing, fraud, malware or other illegal activity.
- Impersonation — Online impersonation is pretending to be a real person or organisation — through a fake profile, website, email or ad — in a way that misleads people about who is behind it.
- DMARC — DMARC is an email authentication standard that lets a domain owner tell receiving servers what to do with mail that falsely uses its domain in the From address, and receive reports about it.
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework) — SPF is an email authentication standard in which a domain publishes, in DNS, the list of servers allowed to send email on its behalf.