With the vishing definition formulated at the start, vishing can be differentiated from other methods of digital data theft.
While with voice phishing, the gateway for criminals is IP telephony, they use emails for phishing in order to bait unsuspecting users into volunteering their personal data. To do this, the devious electronic messages are edited to look as authentic as possible and include a link to a harmful website. A special form of phishing is spear phishing, where scammers zero in on one or several very specific victims. Spear phishers do not cast a large net of fraud, but attack victims with focus and purpose.
Smishing basically works in a very similar way but uses SMS for data theft.
Vishing, phishing, and smishing differ from each other in the way that the con artist makes contact and communicates with the victims. In all versions, the objective remains the same: to steal personal data such as bank details, credit card numbers, or log-in data in order to enrich themselves financially.