The scam & job-safety glossary
Fraud has its own vocabulary — and knowing it is half the defense. Here's every scam tactic, payment trick, and safety concept in plain English, each with a clear definition, real examples, and quick answers to the questions people actually ask.
83 terms across 7 categories — and growing.
Tactics & schemes
The named playbooks — the recognizable shapes fraud takes.
Advance-Fee Scam
A scheme that requires you to pay money up front — for training, equipment, or fees — to unlock a promised job or reward.
Background-Check Fee Scam
A fake hiring step that makes you pay for — or log into a bogus site for — a “required” background or credit check.
Car-Wrap Advertising Scam
A fake “get paid to wrap your car in ads” job that runs on a bad check and a request to forward money.
Data-Entry / Rebate-Processing Scam
A fake “data entry” or “rebate processing” job that charges for a starter kit or software and delivers no real work.
Fake Interview Scam
A sham interview — often text-only or over a messaging app — used to make a fraudulent job offer feel legitimate.
Fake Onboarding Scam
A counterfeit onboarding process that harvests identity documents and bank details, or charges for “equipment,” after a fake offer.
Ghost Job
A job posting for a role the employer isn't actually hiring for — not always a scam, but a close cousin that wastes and exposes applicants.
Mystery Shopper Scam
A fake “mystery shopping” job that uses a bad check and gift-card “assignments” to steal money.
Overpayment Scam
A fraudster sends a check for more than owed and asks you to refund the difference before the check bounces.
Payroll Diversion
A scam that reroutes an employee's direct deposit to the fraudster's account by faking a bank-detail change request.
Phishing
Fraudulent messages that impersonate a trusted brand or person to trick you into revealing credentials, data, or money.
Pig Butchering
A long-con in which a scammer builds trust over weeks, then lures the victim into a fake crypto investment.
Recovery Scam
A follow-up scam targeting people who were already defrauded, promising to recover their lost money for a fee.
Recruitment / Placement Fee Scam
A scheme charging job seekers a fee to secure a placement, visa, or “guaranteed” position that never materializes.
Smishing (SMS Phishing)
Phishing delivered by text message, often an unsolicited “job offer” from an unknown number.
Task Scam
A fake “job” paying tiny amounts for repetitive online tasks, engineered to pressure you into depositing your own money.
Vishing (Voice Phishing)
Phishing conducted by phone call or voicemail, increasingly using AI voice cloning.
Work-From-Home Scam
A fraudulent remote-job offer that exploits the appeal of flexible work to extract fees, data, or unpaid labor.
Payments & money movement
How value gets extracted, moved, and laundered.
Chargeback Fraud
Abuse of the card-dispute process, either by scammers against victims or against legitimate merchants.
Crypto ATM Scam
Being directed to deposit cash into a cryptocurrency ATM, instantly converting it into untraceable, irreversible crypto for the scammer.
Cryptocurrency Scam
Fraud that demands payment in crypto or lures victims into fake crypto platforms, exploiting irreversible transactions.
Fake / Counterfeit Check
A worthless check that appears to clear, then bounces days later — leaving the victim liable for any funds spent.
Gift Card Scam
Demanding payment in retail gift cards, whose codes are untraceable and irreversible once shared.
Money Mule
A person who moves stolen or illicit funds on behalf of criminals — often recruited through a fake job.
Remittance / Money-Transfer Scam
Abuse of cash money-transfer services like Western Union or MoneyGram, which are fast, global, and hard to reverse.
Reshipping Scheme
A fake “quality control” or “shipping agent” job that has victims receive and forward goods bought with stolen cards.
Wallet Drainer
Malicious code or a fake approval that empties a victim's crypto wallet, sometimes disguised as a work “onboarding” step.
Wire Transfer Fraud
Tricking a victim into sending money by bank wire, a fast and largely irreversible payment method.
Zelle / P2P Payment Scam
Abuse of instant peer-to-peer apps like Zelle, Venmo, or Cash App, where payments are fast and hard to recover.
Channels & contact
Where scammers reach you and how they reroute the conversation.
Caller ID Spoofing
Faking the number shown on a recipient's phone to appear local, official, or trusted.
Display-Name Spoofing
Faking the friendly “from” name on an email or message so it appears to come from a real recruiter or company.
Fake Job Ad (Malvertising / Sponsored)
A paid or search-optimized advertisement pushing a fraudulent job or a fake careers site to the top of results.
Fake Job Listing
A fabricated job posting designed to harvest applicant data or funnel victims into a scam.
LinkedIn Recruiter Scam
A fake or hijacked LinkedIn profile posing as a recruiter to exploit the platform's built-in professional trust.
Messaging-App Recruiting (WhatsApp / Telegram)
Conducting an entire “hiring” process on WhatsApp or Telegram, where there's no moderation, no employer record, and no accountability.
Off-Platform Pivot
The moment a “recruiter” pushes you off a monitored job site onto WhatsApp, Telegram, or personal text.
Recruiter Impersonation
A scammer posing as a recruiter or hiring manager from a known company to lend credibility to a fake offer.
Robocall
An automated phone call delivering a scripted scam message, often the opening move in a phone-based fraud.
Spoofed Domain
A web or email domain crafted to imitate a real company's, e.g. swapping letters or adding words.
Actors & infrastructure
The people and plumbing behind organized fraud.
Boiler Room
A high-pressure sales operation pushing fraudulent investments or fees through aggressive phone tactics.
Bulletproof Hosting
Web hosting that deliberately ignores abuse complaints, keeping scam sites and phishing pages online.
Business Email Compromise (BEC)
A targeted scam impersonating an executive, vendor, or colleague to redirect payments or data.
Crime-as-a-Service (CaaS)
A criminal economy where scam kits, stolen data, and infrastructure are sold like commercial software.
Drop Account
A bank account opened or hijacked purely to receive and quickly move stolen funds.
Fraud Ring
An organized group running scams at scale, with specialized roles — a reminder that a lone “recruiter” is often a whole operation.
Front Company
A fabricated or hollow business — sometimes cloning a real one — used to make a fraudulent job look legitimate.
Scam Compound
An industrial-scale fraud operation, often staffed by trafficked workers forced to run scams.
Synthetic Identity
A fake identity stitched together from real and invented data — often built from information harvested through fake job applications.
Technology & AI
The tools that make modern scams scale and convince.
Account Takeover (ATO)
A scammer gaining full control of one of your accounts — email, job board, or bank — usually via stolen or phished credentials.
AI-Generated Scam Content
Scam messages, sites, and personas produced at scale by generative AI, often free of the old spelling giveaways.
Clone Site (Fake Careers Portal)
A pixel-perfect copy of a real company's careers or login page, built to capture applications, credentials, or payments.
Credential Harvesting
Collecting usernames and passwords through fake login pages or forms, usually to take over accounts.
Data Breach
An incident exposing personal data in bulk — often the source of the details that make job-scam approaches feel personalized.
Deepfake
AI-generated video, image, or audio that convincingly imitates a real person.
Fake Applicant Tracking System
A bogus hiring or onboarding portal built to look like real HR software and harvest data or payments.
Malware
Malicious software that steals data, credentials, or money once installed on your device.
Phishing Kit
A ready-made package of fake pages and scripts that lets anyone deploy a phishing site in minutes.
Quishing (QR Code Phishing)
Phishing that hides a malicious link inside a QR code, bypassing the usual URL scrutiny.
Remote-Access Scam
Being persuaded to install remote-control software so a “work tool” or “IT setup” hands your device to a scammer.
Typosquatting
Registering misspelled versions of popular domains to catch mistyped traffic or impersonate brands.
Voice Cloning
AI recreation of a specific person's voice from a short sample, used to fake recruiter calls or executive requests.
Concepts & psychology
The mental levers every scam pulls.
Authority Bias
Our tendency to comply with figures of authority — exploited by scammers posing as bosses, banks, or officials.
Grooming
The slow cultivation of trust before the ask — the defining phase of long cons like pig butchering and drawn-out job scams.
Isolation Tactic
Steering a victim away from friends, family, or advisors who might spot the scam and intervene.
Pretexting
Inventing a believable backstory or role to justify a request and lower the target's defenses.
Red Flag
An observable warning sign that an offer or message may be fraudulent.
Scarcity (Persuasion Principle)
The persuasion lever that makes something feel valuable because it's rare or about to disappear — faked to rush job seekers.
Social Engineering
Manipulating people into breaking security or handing over information, rather than hacking systems.
Social Proof (Persuasion Principle)
The tendency to trust something because others seem to — faked with reviews, testimonials, and groups of “happy earners.”
Sunk-Cost Trap
The pull to keep investing because you've already put money or time in — the engine that keeps task-scam and crypto victims paying.
Too Good to Be True
An offer with rewards far out of proportion to the effort or risk — a hallmark of fraud.
Urgency & Pressure
A manufactured sense of time pressure that pushes victims to act before they can think or verify.
Protection & response
How to defend yourself and what to do if you're targeted.
Credit Freeze
Locking your credit files so no one can open new accounts in your name — free and reversible.
Domain Age Check (WHOIS)
Looking up when a website's domain was registered — a brand-new domain behind an established “company” is a strong scam signal.
FBI IC3 (Internet Crime Complaint Center)
The FBI's portal at ic3.gov for reporting internet crime, including job scams and wire fraud.
Fraud Alert
A free flag on your credit file telling lenders to take extra steps to verify your identity before granting credit.
FTC Fraud Report
Reporting fraud to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov to aid enforcement and warn others.
Identity Theft
The misuse of your personal data — SSN, ID, bank details — to impersonate you or open accounts.
Passkeys
A phishing-resistant, passwordless login tied to your device — it simply won't work on a fake site.
Password Manager
A tool that generates and stores unique strong passwords — and quietly helps detect phishing sites.
Reverse Image Search
Searching a profile photo across the web to expose recruiters or companies using stolen or stock images.
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
A second login step beyond your password, blocking most account takeovers even if a password leaks.
Verification (Verify the Employer)
Independently confirming a company, recruiter, or offer through official channels before you act.
Know the words? Now spot them live.
Definitions build recognition — the game builds instinct. Play Legit or Scam and see how fast you catch these tactics in real offers, DMs, and texts.
Educational content only — not legal, financial, or security advice. Scenarios and company names are illustrative.