---
title: "What is phishing? | Daniel Christensen"
canonical_url: "https://danielchristensen.no/en/glossary/phishing"
last_updated: "2026-09-02T13:55:00.067Z"
locale: en
meta:
  description: "Fake emails, texts or websites that trick you into giving up passwords, card numbers or access."
  "og:description": "Fake emails, texts or websites that trick you into giving up passwords, card numbers or access."
  "og:title": "What is phishing?"
---

[← All terms](https://danielchristensen.no/en/glossary)Glossary

# Phishing

Fake emails, texts or websites that trick you into giving up passwords, card numbers or access.

Also called: phishing attack, phishing attacks, phishing attempt

Phishing is the most common way into both private accounts and companies. The attacker impersonates someone you trust, such as your bank, your boss, the postal service or the IT department, and tries to get you to click a link, open an attachment or hand over information.

Modern phishing is rarely full of typos. The best attempts are nearly impossible to tell from genuine messages, which is why the advice is never “look for bad spelling” but: don’t click links in unexpected messages, and log in via the app or the address you already know instead.

It doesn’t arrive only by email any more. A text about a parcel waiting for you, a LinkedIn message from someone pretending to recruit, a call from “the bank”, a QR code stuck over a real poster: all the same thing. The goal never changes: get you to act quickly, in a channel where you aren’t used to being suspicious.

Two measures work no matter how good the forgery is. One is two-factor authentication, which means a stolen password alone isn’t enough. The other is a workplace routine where it’s entirely fine to pick up the phone and double-check without anyone getting annoyed. Technology stops a lot, but culture decides whether the one email that gets through becomes an incident or a message to IT.

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