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Comment by zik | Hacker News Reader

TIL "vishing" is a word.

If like me you were wondering what it meant:

"Vishing is the telephone equivalent of phishing. It is described as the act of using the telephone in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft."

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This makes no sense. Phishing comes from phreak + fishing, but the "ph" in phreak is already from the word phone (phone + freak) -- so the ph in "phishing" already comes from the word phone! The telephone version of phishing should be... "phishing."

But thanks for the explanation.

Disclaimer: I'm not a linguist, and this word was new to me. FWIW, I inferred something like "v for voice interface". IMHO the "ph" in "phishing", despite the etymology, has lost any meaningful semantic connection to "phone" per se. So this new term might seem redundant or circular in its derivation, while still being a valid / useful addition to the lexicon. (shrug)

It is sometimes referred to as 'vishing - a portmanteau of "voice" and phishing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_phishing

vishing is defined as using social engineering with the intention to get access to the user's vi session. The article is obviously using the term incorrectly.

I'm only now just wondering why (apparently - only looked at the first few search results) there isn't a vish shell....

Unlike EMACS, (neo)vi(m) is a text editor, not an OS.

This battle technique was perfected by the old Norse Vi Kings.

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