Le Dico du Scam

Le Dico du Scam documents the slang used in French-speaking scam and phishing ecosystems: Telegram channels and autoshops, Discord servers, cybercriminal forums, Snapchat, TikTok, and the phishing kits themselves. From Allo to Vouch, browse the full glossary.

Why a glossary?

Francophone scammer communities have developed their own vocabulary, which evolves quickly and differs from English-language cybercrime terminology. Understanding it is a prerequisite for analysts who follow these actors: reading an ad on a Telegram channel, qualifying a phishing kit, or documenting an investigation.

The glossary itself is written in French, to preserve the exact meaning of each term and make it directly usable by analysts monitoring francophone threat actors. On this site, the English version of the glossary translates the definitions, while the terms and the quotes observed in the wild stay in their original French.

A few more entries

• Autoshop: magasin de vente automatique sur Telegram, assuré par un bot, souvent payé en crypto-monnaie.
• Bin: six à huit premiers chiffres d’une carte bancaire, qui identifient la banque émettrice et le type de carte.
• Ligne entrante: ligne téléphonique destinée à recevoir les appels des victimes.
• Mule: personne servant d’intermédiaire à une transaction frauduleuse.
• Shooter: personne pratiquant l’arnaque en contact direct avec la victime.
• Vouch: preuve ou témoignage client, censé montrer la « qualité » d’un produit.

Browse the full glossary, or its source on GitHub.

Contributing

Found a missing term, or a definition to correct or expand?

1. Fork the repository.
2. Add or update the term in glossary.md, under the right letter.
3. One term per pull request, to keep reviews manageable.
4. Briefly mention where the term was observed: Telegram channel, forum, phishing kit…

Only slang observed in real francophone scam and phishing contexts is accepted: no invented definitions, and no content that facilitates criminal activity.

Other languages

Do you know similar glossaries covering scammer slang in other languages (Spanish, Arabic, Romanian, West African Pidgin…)? Get in touch.

Intended for cybersecurity professionals, and for the curious who lurk these networks without malicious intent. Knowing these terms does not encourage their use.