This is my very first themed puzzle. I thank those of this community who play my puzzles, and especially those who comment on them. Thank you for playing, I hope you find this easier to solve than it was to make.
It was! I'm not sure if there was something beyond word association to get me to phishing that I just missed, or if I just got a bit lucky in that phishing was the first word I tried. I knew it had to be something like that, given what the circled letters were, but wasn't sure if it would be phishing, virus, spam, etc.