Spy-phishing is a term

Terminology

Terminology is the study of terms and their use. Terms are words and compound words that in specific contexts are given specific meanings, meanings that may deviate from the meaning the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. The discipline Terminology studies among other...

 coined by Jeffrey Aboud of Trend Micro

Trend Micro

Trend Micro Inc. is a computer security company. It is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and markets Trend Micro Internet Security, Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security, OfficeScan, and other related security products and services...

 at the Virus Bulletin

Virus Bulletin

Virus Bulletin is a magazine about the prevention, detection and removal of malware and spam. It regularly features analyses of the latest virus threats, articles exploring new developments in the fight against viruses, interviews with anti-virus experts, and evaluations of current anti-malware...

 2006 conference in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

.
Defined as "crimeware" (a kind of threat that results in fraudulent financial gains), spy-phishing capitalizes on the trend of "blended threats", it borrows techniques from both phishing

Phishing

Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...

 and spyware

Spyware

Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...

. The downloaded applications sit silently on the user's system until the targeted URL is visited wherein it activates, sending information to the malicious third party.
Through the use of spyware and other trojans

Trojan horse (computing)

A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but steals information or harms the system. The term is derived from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology.-Malware:A destructive program that masquerades as a benign...

, spy-phishing attempts to prolong the initial phishing attacks beyond the point at which the phishing site is available.