WASHINGTON - Credit unions and the rest of the financialservices world apparently have more work to do in terms of consumereducation about online threats, especially phishing, according to anew survey. According to the Pew Internet & American LifeProject, only 29% of Internet-using Americans say they "have a goodidea" what phishing is, while 55% say they are "not really sure"and another 15% say they've never even "heard the term." Phishing,of course, is unsolicited e-mail that tries to dupe consumers intogoing to spoof Web sites and giving up information such as creditcard numbers, passwords and the like. However, the term "spam" wasfirmly recognized by 88% of the respondents to the nationaltelephone survey of 2,001 adults taken between May 4 and June 7,according to the Pew organization, a non-partisan research group.And, in perhaps a more positive sign about consumer onlineawareness, similar numbers of high recognition, 78% each, werereported for the terms "firewall" and "spyware." Meanwhile, acouple of the newest Internet innovations also are still widelyunrecognized among online Americans, the survey finds. Only 13% ofthe respondents said they "have a good idea" of what podcasting -downloading audio files from Web sites onto MP3 players - is, andonly 9% said the same thing of RSS feeds (subscription-basedautomatic alerts to updates on Web sites.) "These findings areanother reminder that new and exciting technology developments thatseize the interest of industry officials and journalists such aspodcasting and RSS feeds usually take a while to register in thewider public," says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew InternetProject. "It's also clear that public awareness of emerging onlinethreats like those posed by phishing also take a while to appear,"he says. The entire report is available at www.pewinternet.org.