Glossary
Clear definitions for identity, trust, and fraud prevention.
0–9
A
- Fraud Account opening fraud Fraud at signup, before any legitimate use.
- Fraud Account takeover ATO A criminal getting into an existing customer's account.
- Biometrics Active liveness Asking the user to blink, turn, or smile to prove they are live.
- Compliance Adverse media screening Searching news for damaging coverage about a customer.
- Verification Age estimation Predicting someone's rough age from a signal like a selfie, voice sample, or account activity, most often a selfie, without collecting an ID.
- Verification Age verification Confirming someone is old enough, usually from an ID or trusted record.
- Verification Agent mandate The specific permission a person gives an AI agent to act on their behalf, including what it can do and up to what limit.
- Fraud Agentic fraud Fraud carried out by AI agents that plan and run the whole scam themselves, from first contact through cash-out, with little or no human directing it in real time.
- Verification Agentic Identity Confirming that an AI agent acting on someone's behalf is tied to a real, verified person and staying within what that person actually authorized it to do.
- Platform Anomaly detection Spotting activity that doesn't match a person's or a system's usual pattern, like a sudden flood of orders from a location that normally has almost none.
- Compliance Anti-money laundering AML The rules and controls that stop illicit money entering the system.
- Fraud Application fraud Lying, or using a false identity, on an application to get something you would not otherwise receive.
- Platform Audit trail An unchangeable record of every check, decision, and reviewer action.
- Verification Authentication Checking that a returning user is the same person who signed up, every time they log in or attempt a sensitive action.
- Verification Authorization Deciding what a verified user is allowed to do.
B
- Verification Bank account verification Confirming that a bank account is real and belongs to the person or business that claims it.
- Compliance Bank Secrecy Act BSA The foundational US anti-money-laundering law.
- Biometrics Behavioral biometrics Recognizing someone by how they type, swipe, and hold the phone.
- Biometrics Biometric template The mathematical summary of a face, fingerprint, or other biometric trait, stored instead of the original image or recording.
- Biometrics Biometrics Identifying someone by a physical trait, such as their face, voice, or fingerprint.
- Compliance BIPA Illinois's biometric privacy law, and the litigation risk that comes with it.
- Fraud Bot attack Automated scripts hitting your signup or login at scale.
- Fraud Business email compromise BEC A scam where a fraudster impersonates an executive or trusted vendor, by email, voice, or now deepfake video, to trick an employee into wiring money or sharing sensitive data.
- Fraud Bust-out fraud Building good credit patiently, then maxing everything out and vanishing.
C
- Platform Case management The workspace where analysts review and resolve flagged cases.
- Compliance CCPA/CPRA California's consumer privacy law and its 2023 expansion, giving state residents rights over their personal data.
- Fraud Chargeback A forced refund a bank issues back to a customer's card after they dispute a charge, taken out of the merchant's account.
- Fraud Chargeback rate The share of transactions that end up disputed and refunded through a chargeback.
- Verification CIAM (Customer Identity and Access Management) A system that manages how customers prove who they are and what they can access across all of a company's digital products, not just at signup.
- Fraud CNP (Card Not Present) fraud Fraud committed on a purchase where the merchant never physically sees the card, most online and phone transactions.
- TrustGraph Confusion matrix A small table that shows how often a detection system was right and wrong.
- Compliance Consent Getting clear permission before collecting biometric or personal data.
- Platform Conversion rate The share of people who start verification and finish it.
- Documents Counterfeit document A fake ID made from scratch to look like the real thing.
- Fraud Credential stuffing Trying leaked username and password pairs against your site en masse.
- Compliance Customer due diligence CDD Understanding a customer's risk before and during the relationship.
- Compliance Customer identification program CIP The written rules a US institution follows to identify customers.
- Fraud Cyber-fraud fusion The merging of cybersecurity and fraud prevention into one connected defense, instead of two separate teams and tools that don't talk to each other.
D
- Fraud Data breach An incident in which sensitive data is exposed to people who should not have it.
- Documents Data extraction Pulling name, date of birth, and number off a document into your system.
- Compliance Data minimization Collecting only what you actually need, and keeping it only as long as you need it.
- Compliance Data residency Keeping data physically inside a specific country or region.
- TrustGraph De-identification Removing or scrambling the details that point to a specific person, so data can be used without exposing who it is about.
- Platform Decisioning engine The component that says approve, decline, or review.
- Biometrics Deepfake AI-generated video, images, or audio of a person, often used by fraudsters to attempt gaining access to a locked account or service.
- Biometrics Deepfake detection Telling AI-generated faces apart from real captures.
- Biometrics Demographic differentials When a biometric works less well for some groups than others, based on traits like skin tone, age, or sex.
- Fraud Device fingerprinting Recognizing a device by combining details like its screen size, operating system, fonts, and browser settings into one identifier.
- Documents Digital forgery An ID that was never printed, but instead edited or generated on a computer.
- Verification Digital identity The full set of data, credentials, and traits, biometric, government-issued, or self-declared, that represents a specific real person online.
- Verification Digital identity wallet An app that holds your verified ID credentials so you can present them on demand.
- Documents Document coverage How many document types from how many countries a vendor can actually read.
- Documents Document liveness Confirming an ID document was captured live and in person right now, not photographed off a screen or reused from an earlier scan.
- Documents Document tampering Altering a real ID, for example by changing a date or swapping a photo.
- Documents Document verification Checking that an ID is real and unaltered.
- Platform Drop-off Where and why users abandon the flow.
- Biometrics Duplicate detection Spotting that a new applicant is already in your system.
E
- Compliance eIDAS 2 The EU regulation creating an official EU digital identity wallet.
- Compliance eKYC (Electronic KYC) Completing Know Your Customer checks entirely online, using a smartphone camera and an ID document, instead of visiting a branch in person.
- Fraud Emulator detection Spotting a fake phone, such as an app running on a simulated device.
- Compliance Enhanced due diligence EDD Digging deeper on the customers who carry more risk.
- Biometrics Equal error rate EER The point where false accepts and false rejects are equally frequent.
F
- Biometrics Face match 1:1 Checking that a live selfie and the ID photo are the same person.
- Biometrics Face search 1:N Checking a new face against every face already in your system, either your own user base (to catch someone opening a second account under a different name), or an external watchlist of known fraudsters (to catch a repeat offender).
- Biometrics Face-swap deepfake A deepfake that replaces one person's face with another's in a video or photo, while keeping the original body and background.
- Biometrics False acceptance rate FAR How often the system wrongly says two different people match.
- Fraud False negative Real fraud that the system missed and treated as legitimate.
- Fraud False positive A good customer flagged as fraud.
- Biometrics False rejection rate FRR How often the system wrongly rejects the right person.
- Fraud First-party fraud Someone using their own real identity, intending never to pay.
- Documents Forged document A genuine document that has been altered to lie.
- Fraud Fraud Deception for financial or access gain.
- TrustGraph Fraud consortium A group of organizations that pool fraud information so each one can benefit from what the others have seen.
- Fraud Fraud rate What share of accounts or transactions turn out fraudulent.
- Fraud Fraud ring A coordinated group running the same attack across many accounts.
- Fraud Fraud-as-a-service Ready-made fraud tools and services sold or rented to anyone, the same way legitimate businesses buy software as a service, so running a scam no longer requires technical skill.
- Fraud Friendly fraud When a customer disputes a charge as unauthorized or undelivered, even though they actually made the purchase and received it.
- Fraud Fullz Slang for a complete package of stolen identity details about one person.
G
- Biometrics GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) The AI technique behind most deepfakes, where two AI models compete against each other until the fake becomes convincing enough to fool the other one.
- Compliance GDPR The EU's data protection law.
- Fraud Generative AI fraud Fraud that uses AI tools to create convincing fake faces, voices, documents, or messages.
- Verification Government source-of-truth validation Confirming that a person's identity actually exists and is in good standing in a government database, not just that their ID document looks real.
- Documents Government-issued ID A passport, driver's license, or national ID card.
I
- Verification Identity assurance level IAL A rating of how confident you can be that an identity is genuine.
- Verification Identity graph A fraud-detection tool that flags unusual clusters, like one device logging into 10 different accounts.
- Fraud Identity mule A real person who lends their identity so that criminals can control an account in their name.
- Verification Identity proofing Gathering and checking evidence about someone before they ever get an account.
- Verification Identity verification IDV Proving that a person is who they claim to be, usually by checking a form of ID against a live selfie.
- Fraud Impossible travel When the same account is used from two places too far apart for one person to have traveled between them in the time available.
- Biometrics Injection attack Feeding fake video straight into the app, bypassing the camera entirely.
- Fraud IP intelligence What an IP address tells you: location, VPN, hosting provider, and reputation.
K
- Verification Know Your Agent KYA The practice of verifying an AI agent, and the person or organization behind it, before letting it take action, the AI-agent equivalent of Know Your Customer.
- Compliance Know your business KYB The same duty, but for company customers.
- Compliance Know your customer KYC The legal duty to know who your customers are before serving them.
- Compliance Know your employee KYE Verifying the people you hire, contract, or grant access to.
- Verification Knowledge-based authentication KBA Security questions about your history, for example, where you lived or what car you financed.
L
M
- Documents Machine-readable zone MRZ The two or three lines of code at the bottom of a passport.
- Fraud Manual review A human looking at the cases the system could not decide.
- Platform Model drift A model getting worse because the fraud patterns or user behavior it was trained on have shifted since launch.
- Fraud Money mule An account used to move someone else's illicit money.
- Biometrics Morphing attack Blending two faces into one photo that matches both people.
- Verification Multi-factor authentication MFA Requiring two or more different kinds of proof to sign in.
N
- Fraud Negative list / blacklist A list of specific addresses, emails, phone numbers, or card numbers a business has flagged as tied to past fraud, used to auto-decline anything matching them again.
- TrustGraph Network-based fraud detection Spotting fraud by looking across many organizations instead of inside just one.
- Documents NFC chip reading Tapping a passport or ID to read the chip inside it.
- Compliance NIST 800-63 The US standard for digital identity assurance.
- Biometrics NIST FRVT The US government's independent benchmark for face-recognition accuracy.
- Verification Non-document verification Confirming an identity from bureau or government records rather than a photo of an ID.
O
- Compliance OFAC The US Treasury office that runs American sanctions lists.
- Verification Onboarding The identity checks a new user goes through before they can use a product. The process typically includes submitting a document, taking a selfie, and waiting for a decision.
- Verification One-time passcode OTP A short code sent by SMS or email that expires quickly.
- Compliance Ongoing monitoring Keeping watch after onboarding, not just at signup.
- Documents Optical character recognition OCR Turning the text in a photo of an ID into data fields.
- Platform Orchestration Routing each user through the right checks instead of running all of them.
P
- Fraud P2P payment fraud Fraud that uses person-to-person payment apps to take money from people.
- Platform Pass rate How many genuine users get through on the first try.
- Biometrics Passive liveness Proving liveness invisibly, from a single normal selfie.
- Verification Passkey A phishing-resistant login that replaces the password with your device and face or fingerprint.
- Compliance PCI DSS The security standard every business that touches credit card data has to follow.
- Documents PDF417 barcode The dense barcode on the back of most US and Canadian driver's licenses.
- Compliance Perpetual KYC pKYC Refreshing customer records continuously instead of on a schedule.
- Verification Personhood Confirming that a real, live human is present at all, before ever checking which specific person they are.
- Documents Photo substitution Replacing the portrait on a real ID with someone else's face.
- Compliance PII (Personally Identifiable Information) Any piece of information that could be used to identify a specific person, such as a name, date of birth, or government ID number.
- Compliance Politically exposed person PEP Someone in a prominent public role, or close to one.
- Biometrics Presentation attack detection PAD Detecting when someone holds up a mask, printout, or screen to the camera.
- Verification Proof of address PoA Confirming where someone actually lives.
- Compliance PSD2 The EU's rulebook for electronic payments, best known for requiring extra identity checks on most online purchases.
R
- Verification Re-verification Re-checking an existing user's identity when a specific trigger calls for it, such as a high-value transaction, an account recovery, or a scheduled compliance refresh.
- TrustGraph Repeat fraud The same fraudster, identity, or device attacking again after being caught, or moving on to attack other organizations.
- Verification Reusable identity Verify once, then reuse that verified identity elsewhere without starting over.
- Compliance Right to erasure A person's right to have their data deleted.
- Fraud Risk signal Any single data point that raises or lowers suspicion.
- Platform Rules engine Explicit if-this-then-that logic on top of the models.
S
- Compliance Sanctions screening Checking names against government prohibition lists.
- Platform Sandbox A test environment with fake data and forced outcomes.
- Documents Screen replay detection Catching a photo of a screen instead of a real document.
- Fraud Second-party fraud Fraud committed by someone the cardholder actually knows and gave access to, not a stranger and not the cardholder themselves.
- TrustGraph Secure multi-party computation SMPC A way for several parties to work out a shared answer together without any of them seeing the others' private data.
- Documents Security features Holograms, microprint, UV ink, and similar physical markers that are difficult to reproduce without specialized printing equipment.
- Verification Self-sovereign identity SSI A model where people, not companies, hold their own identity data.
- Biometrics Selfie verification Taking a selfie to prove you are the person on an ID or the owner of an account.
- TrustGraph Shadow mode Running a new control quietly in the background, without letting it change any real outcomes, so you can see how it would have behaved.
- Fraud Sleeper fraud Accounts opened with a fake or stolen identity and then left quiet before they are used for fraud.
- Compliance SOC 2 An audit of how well a vendor protects your data.
- Platform Software development kit SDK The prebuilt capture component you drop into your app.
- Biometrics Spoofing Any attempt to fool a biometric check with a fake.
- Verification Step-up authentication Asking for extra proof of identity, but only when a specific action, such as a large transfer, a new device, or a change to account recovery settings, raises the risk.
- Platform Straight-through processing STP The share of users decided automatically, with no human involved.
- Verification Strong Customer Authentication SCA A European rule requiring two separate proofs of identity, not just a password, to complete most online payments.
- Fraud Structuring / smurfing Breaking up a large sum of money into smaller transactions specifically to stay under the amount that triggers a bank's reporting requirement.
- Compliance Suspicious activity report SAR The confidential filing made when activity looks like financial crime.
- Biometrics Synthetic avatar deepfake A deepfake that generates an entirely fabricated person, including movement and expression, rather than swapping a face onto real footage.
- Fraud Synthetic identity fraud An identity built from a mix of real and invented data, describing a person who does not exist.
T
- Fraud Third-party fraud Using someone else's real identity without their knowledge.
- Platform Total payment volume TPV The total dollar value of transactions a platform processes over a period, before the platform's own fees come out.
- Compliance Travel Rule Sender and receiver information must travel with a transfer.
- Verification Trust score A single number summarizing how likely an identity is genuine.
- TrustGraph TrustGraph A privacy-preserving trust intelligence network that helps institutions spot repeat fraud across organizations, without pooling anyone's customer data.
- TrustGraph TrustGraph detection categories The kinds of fraud that TrustGraph is designed to flag.
- TrustGraph TrustGraph privacy guarantees Four rules that keep identities and institutions hidden every time TrustGraph runs a query.
U
V
- Fraud Velocity checks Watching how fast something is happening, such as five applications submitted in a minute.
- Verification Verifiable credential VC A digital document whose authenticity anyone can check cryptographically.
- Documents VLM (Vision-Language Model) An AI model that reads and understands the layout and meaning of a document, not just the individual characters on it, the way traditional OCR does.
- Biometrics Voice biometrics Recognizing someone by how their voice sounds.
- Biometrics Voice cloning Using AI to recreate a specific person's voice from a short recording, well enough to fool a phone call.
W
- Compliance Watchlist Any list of people or entities you must check against.
- Platform Webhook A callback that tells your system the moment a decision is ready.
- Fraud Whitelist / approve list The opposite of a blacklist: a list of people or details a business has flagged as trustworthy, so future orders from them skip extra scrutiny.
- Platform Workflow builder A visual editor for designing identity flows without code.
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