What is social engineering:

What is social engineering? Social engineering is the art of exploiting human psychology, rather than technical hacking techniques, to gain access to buildings, systems, or data. Social engineering is a manipulation technique aimed at tricking individuals into revealing sensitive information, carrying out actions they wouldn’t normally perform, or making decisions contrary to their usual behavior. Social engineering attacks are strategies used by malicious individuals to take advantage of human psychology and persuade people to compromise their security or privacy. Social engineers employ various psychological tactics, including flattery, intimidation, authority ... In the context of information security, social engineering is the use of psychological influence of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. It has also been more broadly defined as "any act that influences a person to take an action that may or may not be in their best interests." [1][2] A type of confidence trick for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or system access, it differs from a traditional "con" in the sense that it is often one of many steps ... Because social engineering uses psychological manipulation and exploits human error or weakness rather than technical or digital system vulnerabilities, it is sometimes called "human hacking".