Fishing ... Phreaking ... Phishing

I am always fascinated by etymology. The origin of a word spins stories, they are like mind maps, leading to a better appreciation of the word itself. Etymology traditionally focuses on tracing the origins and historical development of words, often back to ancient languages like Greek and Latin. However, in the modern age, particularly in fields like computer science and technology, many words have more recent roots. This article is about one such word - Phishing.

Phreaking - The term "phreaking" is a blend of "phone" and "freaking." It originated in the 1960s and 1970s and referred to the exploration and manipulation of the telephone network. Phreakers were individuals who explored the technical intricacies of the phone system, often exploiting its vulnerabilities to make free long-distance calls or perform other tricks. The word "phreaking" underscores the fascination and excitement these enthusiasts had for the intricacies of the phone network, blending "phone" with "freaking" to emphasize their unique perspective and activities.

What the y-axis shows - Out of the sample of corpus of books written in English and published in the United States, what percentage of them have the word "Phreak".

Fishing - According to Wikipedia, Fishing is a prehistoric practice dating back at least 70,000 years. Isotopic analysis of the skeletal remains of Tianyuan man, a 40,000-year-old modern human from eastern Asia, has shown that he regularly consumed freshwater fish.

Phishing - [ Fishing + Phreaking { Phone + Freaking } ]. Oxford Languages define phishing as

the fraudulent practice of sending emails or other messages purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

Probably the first time that the term “phishing” was used and recorded was on January 2, 1996. The mention occurred in a Usenet newsgroup called AOHell - a program designed to steal AOL [ America Online ] users’ passwords and credit card information. AOL was the world’s first Internet Access Provider. Algorithmically generated credit card numbers were used to open fake AOL accounts, that posed as AOL employees. These accounts were then used to "phish" legitimate AOL users.

The next time you savour a delicious fish curry, while calling up your friend to tell her about the fabulous restaurant, I won't be surprised if you also think about that too-good-to-be-true message that you deleted recently !