Jim, phishing is when you get an email purporting to be from a trusted source, asking you to follow a link that will require you to enter your login and password info or other sensitive info, into a fake site masquerading as Paypal, a bank or some other site where stealing your info will be of some benefit to the phisher. It could be to steal money/credit card numbers or hijack your email (Yahoo, Gmail etc.) in order to send out viruses etc. that will in turn hijack your (Windows) computer or who knows what else. Phishing is not enticing someone to simply follow a link. If that was the case, virtually ALL spam would be "phishing"!
From WikipediaQUOTE
In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging,[1] and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users,[2] and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies.
Tacit is correct - these are just run-of-the-mill spam - although it's certainly possible that the sites in question were infested with malware (again - Windows only) although that isn't something that is mentioned in the blog post you linked to and now that all the sites are down, it's impossible to see what exactly they were doing. I don't think the person writing that blog post really knew what he/she was talking about, frankly. News sites don't generally require any input of sensitive info - so even a fake one isn't phishing. I meant to say something about it at the time, but never got around to checking the actual sites.
