Not to dismiss your experience (perhaps you had not heard the term yet) but the term 'phishing' has been around longer (mid 90s at least) than ebay and paypal have been big enough to be phishing targets.
I was deeply involved in the fledgling anti-spam industry in the early 2000s, by way of the anti-virus industry, and it was not a common term then. Wikipedia gives the first recorded use as '95, and that refers to it as "fishing", and as being AOL-specific.
I definitely remember old AOL "progz" referring to "fishing"/"phishing". "Phreaking" was a very popular term before that, which is where I'm guessing the f/ph replacement came from.
