fine whine

So what is all the hullabaloo about this "phishing" that I have been hearing in the last month or so? Scammers sending fake pages to steal personal information isn't exactly a new phenomenon, though a recently revealed Internet Explorer bug that allows bogus information in the address bar certainly helps things along, seeing as it takes away one more way to spot a fake.

I weep.

Seriously, though, I have to wonder what Mr. Anastasio and company would think of this appropriation of their band's name for such actions. Any more than Hormel would take offense at their canned meat product's fame of the last decade or so. But "spam" I have long been familiar with, and I don't just mean the can of it that has traveled with me since college. I'd heard of it and used it long before it fell into common usage, let alone on the network news. But "phishing"? I'd never heard of it until getting an email several weeks ago about the supposedly well-known problem. I feel somehow left out.

I guess it's just like me and the whole "wi-fi" debacle. But "wi-fi" popped up in those free computer magazines that still haunt everybody who's left the computer industry. "Phishing" just came out of left field, nearest I can tell. Who's making this stuff up?