The Language of Phishing, Pharming, and Other Internet Fraud-Metaphorically Speaking

The language we use to talk about a thing or phenomenon influences how we perceive of it as a social entity or construction and, in turn, how we use it. In order to make sense of the Internet environment as well as diverse Internet crimes (such as social engineering, phishing, pharming, etc.), metaphors are used as a means to describe the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar. In that capacity, they are ever-present, offering structure and powerful images of that thing or phenomenon. Davidson (cited in Coyne 1995 p. 262)[1] refers to metaphor groupings as untrue statements that are not lies, and Cooper (1997)[2] states that metaphors, by their power of extension, have the ability to trap the unwary by promoting faulty logic. This paper will look at the Internet crime of identity theft from both an internet and non-internet perspective and will include the fraudulent acts of Phishing and Pharming as examples of metaphor dispersion. It will explore these Internet phenomena in terms of their appropriateness or in- appropriateness as metaphors.