In 2001, however, phishers began exploiting online payment systems. In a lot of ways, phishing hasn’t changed much since early AOL attacks.

Policy enforcement then forced copyright infringement of off AOL’s servers, and AOL deactivated all phishing accounts and shutting down the warez community. Eventually, AOL added warnings on all email and instant messenger clients stating 'no one working at AOL will ask for your password or billing information'.

The problem got even worse when phishers set up AIM accounts to send their phishing messages the accounts didn’t fall under AOL’s Terms of Service.

This was an unprecedented attack so people didn’t know what to watch out for, they believed the requests were legitimate. A lot of people willingly ‘verified their accounts’ or handed over their billing information to the bad guys. They started sending messages to users, claiming to be AOL employees using AOL’s instant messenger and email systems. Phishers then moved on to create a different type of phishing attack, using techniques we still see today. AOL put security measures to prevent this practice, shutting down AOHell later in the year. AOHell was a Windows application that made this process more automated, released in 1995. They would open bogus AOL accounts with the random credit card numbers and use those accounts to spam users. While lucky hits were few and far between, they made enough money to cause a lot of damage and to keep doing what they were doing. Phishing attempts started with hackers stealing user passwords and creating random credit card numbers. It was this community that eventually made the first moves to conduct phishing attacks. Since the beginning, hackers and those who traded pirated software used AOL and worked together, forming the warez community. Because it was so popular, it was targeted by phreaks and hackers with bad intentions. In 1995, America Online (AOL) was the top internet service provider with millions of visitors logging in every day. Phreaks and hackers have always been closely related, and the ‘ph’ spelling linked phishing attacks with these underground communities. Hackers in the early days called themselves ‘phreaks’, referring to the exploration, experimenting and study of telecommunication systems. It makes sense that the term “phishing” is commonly used to describe these ploys. as a hook to get people to voluntarily hand over sensitive information. Phishing scams use spoofed emails, fake websites, etc. This is about the time phishing as we know it started, although the technique wasn't well-known to the average user until almost 10 years later. The first known mention of the term ‘phishing’ was in 1996 in the hacking tool AOHell by a well-known hacker and spammer. A phishing technique was described in detail in a paper and presentation delivered to the 1987 International HP Users Group, Interex.

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