Essential Industry Terms Explained

Spyware is software that can be installed on a computer system or computer device without the device user's knowledge. The software allows the installer to directly obtain or convert information from...

A statute of limitations is a law that sets the maximum time the parties involved have to initiate legal proceedings from the date of an alleged offense, whether civil or criminal. However, cases...

Stealing is the action that occurs when someone takes possession of another person's identity, posessions, or information without any legal rights and without any permission, without any intention of...

Stealing business secrets is the act of accessing a business's confidential information and revealing it to people who are not properly authorized to see that information. Intellectual property theft...

Supervised machine learning is the machine learning task of learning a function that maps an input to an output based on example input-output pairs. It infers a function from labeled training data...

Sweepstakes scams are when a company or fraudster tells someone they have won a sweepstakes prize, but that as the winner they must first pay a fee to insure delivery of their prize. The winner may...

A sweetheart scam is a situation where a scammer will pretend to be romantically interested in somebody, with the intention of learning their personal information so that they may commit fraud with...

The term 'swindler' refers to a person who takes advantage of others through deceit. Swindling occurs when a person defrauds another, causing the victim to suffer damage through unfaithfulness or...

Synthetic Identity Creation (SIC) represent the process of creating a false identity. Synthetic Identity Creation (SIC) as a generic term shows how fraudsters collect information about real people...

A synthetic identity is a false identity created by combining real and fabricated information. Criminals use pieces of personally identifiable information (PII)—like Social Security Numbers (SSNs), email addresses, or phone numbers—with fictitious details...

A systems integrator (or system integrator) is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a...

TOR is a free and open-source software that allows anonymous web surfing and protecting against traffic analysis. The name comes from an acronym for a software project named "The Onion Router." The...

The term "tax identity theft" represents fraud made by someone to get advantages in tax returns and tax payments. Tax-related identity theft occurs when someone uses your stolen Social Security...

A technical support scam refers to a type of telephone fraud, where a scammer claims to be able to provide a legitimate technical support service, frequently through cold calls to innocent users,...

High technology crimes (or cybercrimes) are generally defined as any type of illegal activity that makes use of the internet, a private or public network, or an in-house computer system. Technology...

Telecommunication fraud is the theft of telecommunication services (such astelephones, cell phones, computers and so on) or the use of telecommunication service to commit other forms of fraud....

Telecommunications refers to the exchange of information by electronic and electrical means over a significant distance. A complete telecommunication arrangement is made up of two or more stations...

Theft of assets refers to the actual theft of a person or entity's assets. Causing an organization to pay for goods and services not actually received (for example fictitious vendors or employees) or...

Check theft involves stealing, and usually cashing, the check of another. Check theft may also refer to receiving goods or services by passing a bad check which is noncollectable due to insufficient...

A threat is any condition or event that may negatively influence managerial operations (include assignment, purpose, picture, or status), organizational resources, or individuals through an...

Timecard Tampering, also known as time sheet or time card fraud, is when an employee puts down hours they did not work and collects payment for them. There are rules and laws in place against it but...

A token is a unique frame that is approved from node to node about a ring system, it is a sequence of bits passed continuously between nodes in a fixed order and enables a node to transmit...

Tokenization is the process of replacing sensitive data with unique identification symbols that retain all the essential information about the data without compromising its security. Tokenization,...

A transaction authentication number (TAN) is a one-time use code involved in processing online transactions. It offers additional security on top of a password to log in to an account or make...

Travel is defined as the progress of people between two distant locations. Travel could be done by foot, bicycle, vehicle, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or further means, with or without baggage,...

What is Triangulation Fraud? Triangulation fraud is when a customer makes a genuine purchase on a third-party marketplace (for example Amazon or Sears.com), but the product they receive was...

A trojan, or trojan horse virus, is a computer program that seems legitimate, but adds malware to a device once downloaded. It’s name comes from a famous Greek tale.

True negative, also known as specificity, is the ratio of correctly identified non-fraud cases to total non-fraud cases. A true negative test result is one that does not detect the condition when the...

A “true positive” occurs when something innocent is wrongly deemed suspicious. Card issuers have developed sophisticated, automated fraud detection systems that work by detecting activities and...

A trust is a fiduciary connection where one person places some type of trust, confidence, or reliance on another person. The person who is delegated that trust and confidence would then have a...

In cryptography, a Trusted Third-Party (TTP) is an entity which facilitates interactions between two parties who both trust the third party; the Third Party reviews all the critical transaction...

In a two-tier affiliate program, or a multi-tier program (two or more levels), the first tier of commission is the same as in a regular affiliate program. The only difference is the additional...

2FA or Two-Factor Authentication, also called Step-Up Authentication, is a security process in which the user provides two means of identification, one of which is typically a physical token, such as...

U2F or Universal 2-Factor Authentication is a form of 2-factor authentication, in which the user completes a login process using a physical device as one form of verification to prove their identity...

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and is used to specify addresses on the World Wide Web. A URL is the fundamental network identification for any resource connected to the web (e.g., hypertext...

URL spoofing is the process of creating false or fake URLs which pose as another website. The spoofed URL or website address appear to be very similar to the original, actual URL, but in reality...

A disbursement is a payment made on behalf of another person for which reimbursement in the future is expected. An unauthorized disbursements could be defined as an amount of disbursements or...

Unauthorized use of assets describes the intentional, illegal use of the property or funds of another person for one's own use or other unauthorized purpose, particularly by a public official, a...

Unauthorized Withdrawal refers to the withdrawal or transfer of funds from an individual's banking account without proper authorization or consent by the individual.

It is the delivery of less impressions, visitors, or conversions than contracted for a specified period of time. Underdelivery can occur for a variety of reasons. A site or network may experience an...

What is Device Fingerprinting? Device fingerprinting is used to identify and track devices on the internet, particularly computers and mobile devices. It collects information about a device and...

A unique identifier (UID) is a numeric or alphanumeric string that is associated with a single entity within a given system. Unique identifiers can be assigned to anything that needs to be...

Universal Beneficial Ownership (UBO) refers to the concept of identifying and understanding the individuals who ultimately own, control, or benefit from a legal entity, such as a corporation, trust, partnership, or other organization.

Unsupervised machine learning algorithms infer patterns from a data set without reference to known, or labeled, outcomes. Unlike supervised machine learning, unsupervised machine learning methods...

What is utility fraud? Scams keep getting more numerous and sophisticated. You’re probably aware of the different invoicing schemes that exist to steal money and information from businesses. But did...

Validation describes the process of ensuring that something is being completed in the way it is meant to be completed, and by somebody who is meant to be doing that action. There are many kinds of...

Velocity filters are a critical tool in fraud prevention efforts. Their function is to observe the precise information parts (such as e-mail address, telephone number, billing number and even...

The velocity of money is a measurement of the rate at which money is exchanged in an economy. It is the number of times that money moves from one entity to another. It also refers to how much a unit...

Verified by Visa (VBV) is a free program offered by Visa that gives you an added level of protection and offers ease of mind intended for online shoppers. It is a password-protected authentication...

A computer virus is a kind of malevolent software or a piece of code that, when executed, is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or...

Vishing, which stands for "voice-phishing", describes the fraudulent practice of making phone calls or leaving voice messages purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals...

Voice Authorization is a security measure used by the credit card industry to ensure that a particular purchase is being authorized by the actual card-holding customer and not someone else. Merchants...

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and set of technologies for the transfer of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP)...

A web browser is a software program that allows a user to locate, access, and display web pages. Browsers are used primarily for displaying and accessing websites on the internet, as well as other...

WHOIS (pronounced "who is") is an Internet service used to look up information about a domain name. Whenever an individual or organization registers a new domain name, the registrar is required to...

Wire fraud can be defined as an online fraud based on promises. In this fraud a person conducts a plan or scheme to attain a sum of money by blackmailing the other person, or by otherwise convincing...

A work-from-home scheme describes when a fraudster makes an offer to a victim to work from home for a very good amount of money. The fraud truly takes place when the fraudster attempts to illicit...

Workers’ Compensation fraud occurs when someone willfully makes a false statement or conceals information in order to receive workers' compensation benefits or prevents someone from receiving...

Workflow is the definition, execution and automation of business processes, where tasks, information and documents are passed from one person to another for actions according to a set of procedural...

What are write-off schemes? Accountants use write-offs to report depreciation of the value of an asset or to indicate a loss so that the business doesn’t pay taxes on an asset that has a lower value....