Fraud Library
Fraud glossary
From APP fraud to synthetic identities: the words you need to understand fraud news.
A
- Account takeover (ATO)
- When a criminal gains control of a real customer's account, usually with stolen passwords or intercepted codes, and uses it to move money or make purchases.
- Anti-money laundering (AML)
- Laws and controls that require financial firms to detect and report attempts to disguise the criminal origin of money.
- APP fraud
- Authorised push payment fraud: the victim is tricked into sending a payment to an account controlled by a criminal.
B
- Business email compromise (BEC)
- A scam in which criminals impersonate an executive or supplier by email to redirect payments or request transfers.
C
- Card-not-present fraud
- Use of stolen card details for online or phone purchases where the physical card isn't needed.
- Chargeback
- A reversal of a card payment requested through the card issuer, often used when goods never arrive or a payment was fraudulent.
- Confirmation of Payee (CoP)
- The UK name-checking service that warns you if the name on an account doesn't match the one you entered.
D
- Deepfake
- AI-generated audio, image or video that realistically imitates a real person.
G
- Gross negligence
- A very high standard of carelessness. Under UK APP reimbursement rules, it is one of the few reasons a bank can refuse to refund a scam victim.
K
- Know your customer (KYC)
- The checks firms carry out to verify who their customers are before and during the relationship.
M
- Money mule
- A person who receives and moves money on behalf of criminals, knowingly or not. Acting as a mule is a crime in many countries.
P
- Phishing
- Fake emails or websites that copy real organisations to steal passwords, card details or personal data.
- Pig butchering
- A long-running scam that builds trust, often romantically, before persuading the victim to invest in a fake platform.
R
- Remote access scam
- The scammer persuades you to install software that lets them see or control your device, then uses it to access your bank.
S
- SIM swap
- A criminal convinces a mobile operator to move your number to their SIM card so they receive your security codes.
- Smishing
- Phishing by text message (SMS), such as fake parcel or toll payment requests.
- Social engineering
- Manipulating people — through trust, fear or urgency — into giving away money or information.
- Spoofing
- Faking a phone number, email address or website so it appears to come from a trusted source.
- Synthetic identity
- A fake identity built by combining real and invented personal data, used to open accounts and obtain credit.
V
- Verification of Payee (VoP)
- The EU check that compares the payee's name with the IBAN before a transfer and warns you about mismatches.
- Vishing
- Voice phishing: scam phone calls, increasingly using cloned voices, to steal money or information.