Essentially, phishing is when someone (or a group of people) sends you an email that looks as if it’s from a legitimate company. For example, I regularly get hit by phishing attempts that look like emails from the Geek Squad and contain what appear to be invoices for products or services. Now, I know I’ve not used Geek Squad for over a decade, so it’s quite obvious to me that these emails are not really from that company.
There are also other tell-tale signs, such as misspellings, blurry images, and –the most obvious — links that have nothing to do with Geek Squad).
Also: What is phishing? Everything you need to know to protect yourself from scammers
The hope (on the part of the sender) is that I’ll click on that Geek Squad email, which will then (most likely) install malicious software on my computer or get me to reveal sensitive information about myself (such as my address, bank account information, passwords, etc). My rule of thumb is that I don’t click on links that weren’t sent by someone I actually know. I take that one step further and verify a link is legit before clicking on it.
To sum it up: Phishing is an attempt to get you to click on a malicious link that could have severe ramifications. In other words, don’t do it.
But Google knows that phishing attacks continue to get smarter and harder to spot. Because of this, it has added an additional layer of protection to Gmail, in the form of Enhanced Safe Browsing.
