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Glossary Security

Phishing

Phishing is a scam in which attackers pose as a trusted organisation or person, usually by email or text, to trick you into revealing credentials or money.

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In more detail

Typical signs are urgency, a link to a look-alike domain, an unexpected attachment and a mismatch between the displayed and real sender. Defences include checking the actual address, never signing in through an emailed link, Multi-factor authentication (MFA) (which limits what a stolen password gives) and DMARC on your own domain. A defanged URL, with dots and the scheme altered, is safe to share when reporting.

Try these tools

URL Defanger

Defang URLs, domains, IP addresses and email addresses (hxxp://example[.]com) so they cannot be clicked by accident.

Email Header & Security Analyzer

Paste raw email headers to identify the true sender, understand routing hops, and analyze email security protocols like SPF, DKIM.

See also

  • Glossary Social engineering
    Social engineering is manipulating people, rather than breaking technology, to get them to reveal information or take a harmful action.
  • Glossary Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
    Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires two or more kinds of proof to sign in.
  • Glossary DMARC
    DMARC is a DNS policy that tells receivers what to do with email that fails SPF and DKIM alignment, and where to send reports about it.
  • Guide How Email Authentication Works: SPF, DKIM and DMARC
    What SPF, DKIM and DMARC each check, what their DNS records look like.
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