Phishing is a technique used by computer pirates to overturn the identity of an internet user. By email, SMS or false websites, this technique consists, more often than not, of making the user believe that s/he is in a safe and secure environment, and therefore of trust, so as to provide his/her login and password information to the pirate by believing that they are connecting to a trusted website.

However, phishing or phishing attempts represent a crime or attempted crime, for which provision is made under article 313-3 of the Criminal Code. However, attempts by public officers to identify and initiate legal proceedings against perpetrators of these infringements are almost impossible given the difficulty of internet in application of the law.

Consequently, in order to prevent this type of fraud, the best solution is to use a web browser which by default has a counter-measure system (e.g. Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox or Safari). This system regularly updates a list of fraudulent sites as indicated by web users at www.phishing-initiative.com and browsers then block access to these sites by users, which helps protect them from any "phishing" attempt.