What SC&MS is

The Scam Classification & Mapping System (SC&MS) is a research framework built around a structured taxonomy for classifying scam techniques from first contact to financial extraction. It gives defenders a common language for describing how scams work, broken into reusable techniques.

SC&MS organizes scam behavior into the ABCDEF lifecycle:

Access
Vectors used to initiate first contact with a potential victim
Bait
Lures, offers, and alerts used to entice a victim's engagement
Coercion
Pressure and control tactics used to compel action or maintain compliance
Deception
Fabricated or manipulated artifacts used to mislead victims and make the scam believable
Exploiting Trust
Borrowed or cultivated trust used to lower a victim's skepticism
Financial Gain
Methods used to extract money, assets, or other value from victims

Version 0.3 includes 156 techniques and subtechniques across these six stages, each documented with descriptions and tags for filtering.

Why it exists

Reporting and classification of scams remain inconsistent across sectors and jurisdictions. Defenders describe the same scam behavior in different terms, which makes it harder to share intelligence or coordinate a response.

SC&MS exists to give researchers and fraud teams a common, lifecycle-based vocabulary for classifying scam behavior consistently.

What makes it different

Techniques, not categories

SC&MS maps how a scam happened.

IDs that never move

An ID you use today points to the same technique next year.

The description is the contract

When the name and the description seem to disagree, the description wins.

In scope: fraud where the victim is deceived into taking part.

Who it is for

  • Fraud teams: Tag scam cases with technique IDs, so different analysts can record the same scam the same way.
  • Trust & safety: Describe what a scam account did, stage by stage, not just which policy it broke.
  • Security & threat intelligence: Map which scam techniques your controls catch, and share tradecraft with partners using stable IDs both sides can look up.
  • Researchers: Code cases against published technique descriptions, so findings can compare across studies.
  • Law enforcement: Describe a scam operation's methods the same way across jurisdictions.
  • Education & awareness: Teach the stages people can learn to spot, from first contact to the money.

Current status

SC&MS is at version 0.3, published March 2026. It is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0 and will be relicensed under CC BY 4.0 on December 31, 2027, or at the release of version 1.0 if that comes first. The taxonomy source is available on GitHub and can be explored interactively in the Explorer.

Permanence

Technique IDs are permanent. Once assigned, an ID points to the same technique for the life of the framework. New techniques get new IDs. Since publication, no ID has been renumbered or reassigned. Technique URLs carry that same guarantee. Every technique has a permanent, citable page at https://scams.dev/techniques/<ID>/. SC&MS will not intentionally reassign or break these URLs, and the underlying ID-to-technique mapping is published in the public taxonomy repository, independently of this website.

How to cite

If you use SC&MS in research or operational work, please cite the framework or an individual technique by its permanent URL.

To cite the framework as a whole:

Narang, S. S. (2026). SC&MS: Scam Classification & Mapping System (Version 0.3) [Data set]. https://scams.dev/

For example, to cite technique B003:

Narang, S. S. (2026). Late fee notice (B003), in SC&MS: Scam Classification & Mapping System (Version 0.3). https://scams.dev/techniques/B003/

A BibTeX entry is available in the taxonomy README, and each technique page carries its own cite block.

Maintainer

SC&MS is created and maintained by Satnam Singh Narang.

Independence

SC&MS is an independent research project. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any employer, vendor, or organization. The taxonomy draws on nearly two decades of research.

Where to next