Phishing attacks seek to trick account holders into divulging sensitive account information through the use of e-mails which appear to come from trusted financial institutions and retailers. Several previous URL spoofing weaknesses in Internet Explorer have been widely used by phishing attacks. The ability to display a fraudulent URL in the status bar is especially useful, as security-conscious users would check the status bar before clicking through. The technique does not disguise the URL displayed in the address bar upon arrival at the destination page, meaning alert users will recognize the spoof at that point. But the tactic could be used to send e-mail recipients and web surfers to pages that attempt to download malware upon loading, a common tactic used by phishers to install trojans and keyloggers.

Netcraft has developed a service to help banks and other financial organizations identify sites which may be trying to construct frauds, identity theft and phishing attacks by pretending to be the bank, or are implying that the site has a relationship with the bank when in fact there is none.