Phishing is the illegal practice of impersonating a reputable organization in order to get someone to reveal sensitive personal information such as passwords or credit card numbers. This can be conducted through email, instant messaging, SMS, and even over voicemail. Most attempts are made on a wide scale, sent out to the population at random, but some of these attacks are specifically targeted toward individuals or organizations.

As technology improves, these scams get more and more elaborate, leading to more and more successful phishes. It’s one of the internets oldest threats, costing people thousands of dollars a year and companies millions of dollars annually.