Old Phish, New Phish

News and Media Relations staff covering the International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS 2009) are filing conference updates in addition to their regular stories:

Phishing—the practice of tricking computer users into voluntarily giving up sensitive information such as account passwords or social security numbers—has been around longer than many people realize.

In his keynote address on Wednesday, renowned cyber security expert Howard A. Schmidt detailed its history.

“Phishing as a way to steal things began in the early days of the Internet, when we were still paying $6 an hour for online time to America Online and Compuserve,” he said. “Users would pretend to be from AOL and ask someone else for his or her password; that way they would avoid paying the $6 charge for the service.”

—Joseph W. McLaughlin