For the past few months I've been beta-testing Microsoft
Internet Explorer 7. It comes with a number of new features but,
because I'm a language watcher, the feature that most interested
me was the Phishing Filter. Huh? Could Microsoft, as corporate
and mainstream as a tech company can get, be using the jargon
term phishing in its flagship Web browser? At first I figured
that it must be some sort of internal code name, but no, it's
the actual mass-market name of the feature. This small ripple in
the linguistic pool is a reflection not of a newfound coolness
on Microsoft's part but of the phishing phenomenon itself,
particularly how pervasive it has become and how most folks
grasp the theory and seriousness of this vulnerability.
"Phishing" refers to creating a replica of an existing Web page
to fool users into submitting personal, financial, or password
data to what they think is their bank or a reputable online
retailer. The term comes from the fact that Internet scammers
use (increasingly sophisticated) lur