The distinction to make here is that phishing, historically, has been acheived when the victim is unknowingly redirected to an alternate site, where their personal information is taken(or volunteered) and often used fraudulently.
A popular example of this a few years back, occured when many Hotmail users were spammed by con artists, who had copied the basic page layout from the American Red Cross. They then set up a phony Red Cross site, using real Red Cross graphics and information, in order to entice people to, "donate to Hurricane Katrina victims." Many people fell victim, as they had no idea that they had been redirected from the email to a fraudulent site.
If FAST was guilty of phishing, an example would be to hack into Chung's web site for BOP. When someone went to pay online for an item, Chung's payment page would not appear. Instead, the customer would unknowingly be redirected to a FAST payment page, where there would be no indication that the page was not from BOP. At this point, the customer would submit personal information, which would be utilized in any number of illegal manners.
Both of these examples would be classified as illegal. Redirecting people from a similar URL, to your own site, is a common, cheap and effective tool in the e-commerce world. In this case, it was utilized in a less than classy manner. If AFP customers want to find AFP, they will.
I will keep my other thoughts to myself for now.
and to think that at one time I actually stepped foot in that business and bought something from them. NEVER AGAIN!!!!
