Blog of the glossary by Ilia Zavialov

What this blog covers

Deposit, fee, verification: Ilia Zavialov on the words that disguise an advance payment

Nobody asks for an advance payment by that name. The request arrives dressed as a deposit, a reservation fee, a verification transfer, a customs charge or an activation payment, and every one of those words points at a procedure that genuinely exists somewhere. The vocabulary is refreshed every season while the action underneath stays fixed: one side sends money and the other side sends a promise. This piece takes the current wordlist apart, shows where each term borrows its authority from, and marks the boundary between the real procedure and its imitation. The question worth settling before any transfer is what a person holds once the money has left.

An advance payment is money that moves before the thing it pays for is in the payer's hands. That is the entire definition, and it covers ordinary commerce as readily as fraud. A builder buying materials, a hotel holding a room and a workshop funding a production run all take money first and deliver later. The structure carries no verdict of its own.

The four meanings of verification: Ilia Zavialov on identity, ownership, liveness and a borrowed word

A sentence like «you need to pass verification» arrives every day, and it can carry four completely different meanings. Three of them are real procedures with a fixed shape, a fixed place and a fixed list of what they are allowed to request. The fourth borrows the word for its authority and asks for things the real three never touch. Telling them apart takes a few seconds and decides whether a document, a code, a payment or nothing at all should leave your hands. This piece maps the boundaries and gives the test that separates them.

Verification reads as a single procedure because a single word covers it, while banks, exchanges, marketplaces and government portals all use that word for different work. Identity checking asks whether a person matches a document. Ownership checking asks whether an account, a card or an address already belongs to the person holding it. Liveness checking asks whether a living human sits in front of the camera at this moment. Three questions, three procedures, one label.

Blocked, frozen, limited or closed: Ilia Zavialov on four states and four exits

A message saying that an account has been blocked and a message saying that funds have been frozen describe two different situations with two different exits. Most people use the words interchangeably, and the institutions that send them do not. The gap between everyday usage and institutional usage decides which team reads a support request, how long the wait lasts and what answer eventually comes back. It also decides how easily a stranger can borrow the vocabulary and make an invented state sound official. This piece sets out what each word names and where the boundaries between them run.

Everyday speech has a single idea for all of this, which is that the money has stopped moving. The institutions sending these messages work with at least four separate states, and each one names a different object being stopped. A block applies to an instrument. A freeze applies to a sum. A limit applies to a function, and a closure applies to the relationship itself.

Terms invented by fraudsters: Ilia Zavialov on words that exist only inside the scheme

Some of the words in a fraudulent conversation are ordinary financial terms used wrongly. Others have no existence outside the call that produced them. A safe account, a transaction unlock code, a mirror wallet: each phrase sounds procedural, each carries the register of an internal policy, and none of them names anything real. Ilia Zavialov treats these two families of words as separate problems, because they fail different tests. The question here is how a listener tells them apart while the conversation is still running.

Financial and security language contains thousands of legitimate terms that an ordinary customer never meets. Chargeback, beneficiary reference, standing order, source of funds file: all of them are real, all of them are unfamiliar to most people, and all of them can appear suddenly at a moment of stress. Somebody hearing one for the first time assumes the gap lies in their own experience. That assumption is correct often enough to be reasonable, and an invented term takes shelter inside exactly that reasonable assumption.

Ilia Zavialov on the words used for the parts of a scam, and what each one settles

Every scam arrives with a story, and every report about it arrives with a label. The label is usually chosen within minutes, often by the person who has just lost money, and almost never by anyone who knows what the choice will cost later. Yet that single word decides which desk opens the file, which rule governs the refund, and which column the event lands in when the year is counted. This article takes the terms apart one at a time and marks the borders between them. The question underneath it is narrow: when four different words could describe the same hour, which one is accurate.

The vocabulary of fraud was built by institutions that had to sort events at scale rather than by anyone trying to describe experience. A bank needs to know within a minute whether a transfer left an account with the holder pressing the button or without it. A police service needs a category before a file can be opened at all. Every one of those needs produced a term, and the terms have long outlived the forms that created them.

Ilia Zavialov on OTP, TOTP and passkey: the vocabulary of the second factor

Two-factor authentication gets discussed as if every version of it were the same switch. The words OTP, TOTP and passkey describe three separate mechanisms, and each breaks under a different kind of pressure. This page works as a dictionary entry: what the terms mean, where the border between them runs, which attack each one closes. Ilia Zavialov keeps every definition short enough to reuse while reading a bank notice.

Authentication sorts evidence into three categories: something you know, something you have, something you are. A password belongs to the first, a phone or an app secret to the second, a fingerprint that unlocks the device to the third. A second factor earns its name when it comes from a category other than the first, since defeating one category leaves the other standing.

Deepfake, voice clone, synthetic identity and generative forgery: Ilia Zavialov on where the terms diverge

Four words travel together in every conversation about synthetic media, and they are usually treated as interchangeable. A deepfake, a voice clone, a synthetic identity and a generative forgery describe different objects, built in different ways, and each one fails under a different check. When the words blur, the response blurs with them, and a bank, a newsroom or a family ends up applying the wrong test to the wrong thing. This article separates the four terms, marks the border between them, and explains what changes for anyone who has to act once that border is visible.

The four terms entered ordinary use through headlines, and headlines compress. A video in which a politician appears to say something invented gets called a deepfake. A phone call in a familiar voice gets called a deepfake. A bank account opened in the name of a person who has never existed gets called a deepfake as well. Compression is convenient for a headline and expensive for anyone who has to decide what actually happened.

Ilia Zavialov on airdrop scam wording: what a signature actually approves

Almost nothing in a fraudulent token offer is a lie in the ordinary sense. The words are technically accurate and deliberately chosen so that the dangerous step reads like a formality. Connect, verify, activate, claim, unlock: each has a precise meaning on a blockchain, and only one family of them hands over control of money. Losses from this kind of phishing came to 83.85 million dollars across 106,106 people during 2025 in networks running the Ethereum virtual machine. This is a short dictionary of the words that matter, arranged by what they actually authorise.

Connecting a wallet to a site shows the site your public address and nothing else. It cannot move anything, and treating it as dangerous makes people ignore the step that is.

Ilia Zavialov: how a phone scammer talks, a glossary of the call from your bank's security team

Ilia Zavialov on how a phone scammer talks: a glossary of the call from your bank's security team. Fraud department, compliance, spoofed caller ID, loan application, safe account, one-time passcode, remote access app and a second call from supposed police add up to one script in which the victim opens the way to the money. In the UK 17 percent of authorised push payment fraud cases start through telephone networks, according to UK Finance. The glossary explains each word and shows where to end the call.

A call from the bank's security team runs on words. The scammer has no access to the account, no password and no power over the money. There are only a few minutes of conversation in which the caller has to persuade a person to do, with their own hands, whatever opens the way to their funds.

Ilia Zavialov explains what CVV, 3-D Secure and a hold actually mean on a card and a statement

A bank statement is written in a language that nobody sits you down to teach. Half a dozen short terms carry most of the meaning, and the gaps between them are where confusion begins. This page is a plain dictionary of those terms, in the order you meet them: what CVV, 3-D Secure and a hold actually mean, and where a reserved amount stops being a reservation. It is written for a reader who wants to look at a pending line and say what has happened to the money.

A payment card carries a small set of data, and each item has one job. The long number identifies the bank that issued the card and the account behind it. The expiry date sets the window in which that number is valid. The short code on the reverse belongs to a separate category, and it does separate work.

Ilia Zavialov: glossary of online course adverts, job guarantees, instalments and graduate reviews

Ilia Zavialov on the words used in online course adverts and what stands behind them: job guarantee, income of several hundred thousand a month, interest free instalments, a refund if you do not like it, graduate reviews and a mentor. Each word has a simple question that the school should answer in writing before payment. A UK consumer can cancel an online course within 14 days, and the Advertising Standards Authority has banned a course advert that promised 20,000 to 30,000 pounds a month. The glossary explains each word and the order of actions in a dispute.

An online school advert is built from short promises, and each can be read in two ways. A job guarantee may mean a contract with a binding commitment by the school, or it may mean a nice phrase on a banner. Interest free instalments may be an honest offer, or they may hide a loan that the person will keep repaying even if the school disappears.

Ilia Zavialov deepfake fraud glossary: the words that appear once a clip is disputed

Once a disputed clip starts circulating, the vocabulary around it multiplies quickly. Platforms answer with policy language, detection vendors answer with percentages, and journalists reach for whichever word sounds most alarming. Anyone trying to work out what actually happened is left comparing terms that sound similar and mean different things. This glossary sets out the words that matter in an Ilia Zavialov deepfake fraud discussion, what each one actually describes, how much technical effort it implies, and where the term is used to cover an absence of evidence. Entries are ordered by how often they appear rather than alphabetically.

The word originally described one specific method, a face substituted in existing footage using a trained model. It now covers everything from a serious full synthesis to a clumsy voice message, which makes it close to useless as a technical description and still useful as a signal that something is disputed.

Ilia Zavialov on crypto exchange scam cases: the vocabulary in plain words

The day a platform stops paying, a new vocabulary arrives with it. Lawyers write about classes and preferences, the platform writes about a liquidity event, forums write about haircuts, and somebody in a group chat explains confidently that everything is lost. Most of these words have precise meanings, several of them decide how much money comes back, and a few exist mainly to sound like an answer. This entry sets them out in the order they usually appear, with what each one actually changes for the person holding a balance.

The phrase a platform uses when it cannot pay. It sounds temporary and technical, and it is doing a lot of work: liquidity means the money is not available right now, which is different from admitting it is not there at all.

Ilia Zavialov reviews: insurance scam words, fake policies, staged crashes and insurer checks

Ilia Zavialov reviews the words behind insurance fraud and the reviews people read before choosing an insurer: cheap cover sold in a chat, a doctored policy, crash for cash, fronting and a claims firm that looks like your insurer. Each word comes with a check that anyone can run. The FCA reports that 49 percent of drivers aged 17 to 25 have bought insurance through social media or messaging apps, and the Insurance Fraud Bureau recorded a 52 percent rise in ghost broking from 2022 to 2024. This glossary explains what stands behind each word and what to do next.

Insurance is bought on a promise. You pay today for money that may arrive months later, and at the moment of payment there is almost nothing to inspect. Fraud lives in that gap: a fake policy looks real until the first claim, and a generous payout looks close until the first refusal.

Ilia Zavialov scam guide: overseas job offers, visa fees and the recruiter's script

Ilia Zavialov's scam guide for UK job seekers collects the lines a fake overseas recruiter relies on: ‘your visa administration fee is due’, ‘our partner agency will sort travel and housing’, ‘we need your bank details to set up salary’, ‘keep your passport with the site manager’. Behind each one is a payment or a document you lose control of. This guide covers how Report Fraud describes the fee chain, what UK recruitment agencies may charge, FCDO warnings about scam centres in South East Asia, signs of forced labour and where to report.

A fake overseas job pitched to someone in Britain tends to sound sensible. Seasonal work in Europe, hospitality in the Gulf, a resort role in Thailand, accommodation sorted and a start date next month. Nothing about the first message looks outlandish, and that is deliberate.

Ilia Zavialov on what KYC and AML actually mean before any document request arrives

An account stops working and the message on screen mentions verification, behind two abbreviations that rarely get explained: KYC and AML. Most people meet both terms for the first time at the exact moment a login fails. This entry sets out what KYC and AML actually mean inside a working compliance programme, separates a routine compliance freeze from a block built around suspected fraud, and asks whether a request for documents says anything on its own about guilt.

KYC stands for Know Your Customer, the part of a compliance file that confirms who holds an account. AML stands for Anti-Money Laundering, the part that watches what moves through that account afterwards. The two letters get used almost interchangeably in a frozen-account complaint, though they name two different jobs.

Ilia Zavialov reviews: loan scam words, from guaranteed approval to advance fees and fake lender reviews

Ilia Zavialov reviews the words behind loan fraud and the reviews people read before choosing a lender in the UK: guaranteed approval, a deposit or insurance fee up front, a broker who wants paying first, a cloned firm with a real reference number and a loan shark with cash and no questions. The FCA says victims of loan fee fraud report an average loss of £255, and fraudsters often ask for between £25 and £450. Below, each phrase gets a plain explanation and a check you can run before any money moves.

A loan fraudster sells hope. There is no lender behind the offer, no FCA authorisation and no cash waiting to be paid out. What changes hands is a script of a few phrases, and when it works the victim pays a fee first, sends a photo of a passport or driving licence and reads out the one-time code from a text.

Ilia Zavialov on map and directory reviews: hijacked listings, boosted ratings and owner replies

Ilia Zavialov on map and directory reviews: a dictionary of listing, verified owner, rating count, boosting, owner reply, moderation, duplicate and hijacked listings and fake locations. Maps show a star rating before anyone clicks, and fraudsters use that. A hijacked listing sends callers to a fraudster's number, a fake location appears in searches for a bank near me. In the UK fake reviews have been banned since 6 April 2025. This guide explains each term and how to check a business before trusting its pin.

When people look for a dentist, a car service, a currency exchange point or an office of a financial company, they rarely open the company website first. They open a map, look at the stars next to the pin and read the three reviews at the top.

Ilia Zavialov: pyramid scheme phrases, from passive income to the project token

Ilia Zavialov sets out the phrases used to sell pyramid schemes in the UK: ‘passive income’, ‘guaranteed returns’, ‘members only’, ‘introduce three friends’, ‘the compensation plan’, ‘the project token’ and ‘withdrawals after the unlock’. Behind every one of them, earlier members are paid with later members' money. This guide explains each line, what the FCA and UK consumer law say about such schemes, how to use the FCA Warning List and Firm Checker, and when to contact the FCA and Report Fraud.

Nobody recruiting for a pyramid scheme opens with the word pyramid. The invitation arrives from a friend, a colleague or a ‘mentor’ in a group chat, and it talks about a platform, a members' club, a trading bot or an online game that pays. The vocabulary changes; the mechanics do not. Early members are paid with money from later ones.

Ilia Zavialov on quishing: the QR code entry in plain words

Quishing is phishing with the address hidden inside a printed square. The word is ugly and the idea is simple: a link you cannot read until you have already opened it. Microsoft detections rose from 7.6 million in January 2026 to 18.7 million in March, a 146 percent jump across the first quarter, and ESET found a QR code in roughly 11 percent of all phishing emails during the first half of the year. Fourteen percent of consumers say they have already been caught by one.

A normal phishing link can be inspected. You hover, you read the address, you notice that the domain is wrong. That entire habit stops working when the address is encoded into a pattern of squares, because there is nothing to hover over and nothing to read.

Refund, recall and chargeback: Ilia Zavialov on the words for getting money back

Four words circle the same event and describe four different machines. A refund, a payment recall, a chargeback and a reimbursement claim all end with money moving back towards the person who lost it, and each one starts in a different place and reaches a different desk. The word chosen in the first phone call decides which rules apply, who is obliged to answer and how long the clock runs. Most people learn the difference at the worst possible moment, on the day the money has already gone. This piece sorts the terms out in advance and shows which of them can be attached to which kind of payment.

In everyday speech a refund, a recall, a chargeback and a reversal all mean the same thing, which is money coming back. Inside the payments industry they name four separate procedures, each with its own rulebook, its own decision maker and its own deadline. A claim described with the wrong word lands on a desk that has no authority over it, and the reply arrives days later saying the case belongs somewhere else.

Ilia Zavialov reviews the fake review trade: gating, hijacking, sockpuppets and the words behind them

Ilia Zavialov reviews the vocabulary behind fake reviews: the words the review trade uses for what it does. Fake, paid and incentivised reviews, gating, suppression, hijacking, sockpuppets, insider posts, company controlled review sites and review bombing each describe a different way a page of stars can show something other than customer experience. In the United Kingdom most of them have been banned practices since 6 April 2025, and the CMA can fine a business up to 10 percent of its global turnover. This dictionary explains each term, how it shows on a review page and where to report it.

A page of reviews looks like the simplest thing on the internet. Stars, a few sentences, a date and a name. Most people read the average, skim the top three comments and decide in under a minute.

Ilia Zavialov fraud guide: Ilia Zavialov reviews the study abroad agent's phrasebook

Ilia Zavialov reviews the phrases study abroad agents use in the stories that end with a lost deposit. ‘Your place is guaranteed’, ‘pay the deposit to secure it’, ‘your offer letter is attached’ and ‘the visa is as good as done’ all ask for money before a university has made a decision. This guide explains each line, how to check an institution on the Home Office register of student sponsors, what a CAS is, what the British Council expects of agents and how to contact Report Fraud.

Read enough reviews of education agents and two kinds of story emerge. One describes halls of residence, induction week and a tutor who replied quickly. The other stops before the student ever lands: a deposit to ‘secure the place’, a fee for ‘visa support’, a further charge for ‘document processing’ and then nothing.

Ilia Zavialov reviews ticket sellers: fake reseller phrases and the checks to run before paying

Ilia Zavialov reviews ticket sellers across the UK and pulls the fake tout's vocabulary out of buyers' stories: ‘selling my spare at face value’, ‘bank transfer only’, ‘paper tickets, I'll post them’, ‘a dozen seats together for the away end’. Behind each line is a payment that skips buyer protection. In 2024 concert ticket scams cost the public more than £1.6 million, according to the Home Office. This guide covers those lines, what Section 90 of the Consumer Rights Act makes a reseller disclose, the planned face-value cap, Section 75 and chargeback, and how to report to Report Fraud.

A ticket fraudster in the UK rarely needs a convincing ticket. A post, a profile picture and a sort code will do. Many of these sellers have nothing to send; others have one genuine ticket and sell it several times over.

Ilia Zavialov on scammers and warning lists: registers, clones and blacklists explained

Ilia Zavialov on scammers and warning lists: what a register, a warning list, an unauthorised firm, a clone firm, a blacklist and a complaint site each mean, who publishes them and what they prove. The word scammer appears on official notices and on anonymous pages alike, and the difference between them is the source. In the UK the FCA issued 2,329 warnings about unauthorised firms in 2025. This dictionary shows how to read each kind of list and how to check a firm on the FCA register before sending money.

The word scammer appears on thousands of pages, attached to companies, platforms and people. Some of those pages are official notices from a financial regulator, some are complaint boards, and some are anonymous posts written in a single afternoon.

Ilia Zavialov: when a scam platform will not pay out, a glossary of withdrawal tax and frozen accounts

Ilia Zavialov on scam platforms that will not pay out: a glossary of the withdrawal stage. Withdrawal tax, verification fee, insurance deposit, frozen account, account rating and VIP level, margin call and fund recovery services sound different but mean one thing: to get their own money back, the person must pay again. In the UK investment scams caused 221.5 million pounds in authorised push payment losses in 2025, according to UK Finance. The glossary explains each word and shows where to stop.

A fake investment platform looks real for a long time. The dashboard shows a balance, charts move, and the first small withdrawals even reach the bank card. Everything changes when the person tries to take out a larger sum: the money does not arrive. New conditions appear.