Patent ID: 11966468
Assignee: EQUIFAX INC.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 7:
8. A method comprising:
obtaining transaction data from servers associated with online services, the transaction data identify electronic transactions involving the online services;
generating, by a processing device and from the transaction data, a graph data structure having nodes and links between the nodes, the nodes representing individuals having identities usable for accessing the online services and the links between the nodes representing common characteristics between the pairs of individuals, wherein the common characteristics are determined based on the transaction data;
detecting, as a potential synthetic identity, a first identity that is usable for accessing an online service and that is represented by a node in a first subset of the nodes, wherein detecting the potential synthetic identity comprises performing, by the processing device:
(a) determining that a first degree of connectivity among the first subset of the nodes exceeds a threshold connectivity, the first degree of connectivity indicating electronic communications involving a subset of the individuals represented by the first subset of the nodes, wherein the first degree of connectivity is determined by:
determining node edge densities for the nodes, wherein a node edge density indicates a node-to-link ratio among the first subset of the nodes;
identifying weights for at least some of the links, wherein a value of a weight for a link is associated with a type of link between the nodes where links representing characteristics that have a higher likelihood of corresponding to a specific individual have a higher value weight than links representing characteristics that correspond to multiple individuals; and
computing, based on the node edge densities and the weights, the first degree of connectivity for the first subset of the nodes, and

(b) determining that links among the first subset of the nodes represent activity having a first likelihood of connectivity lower than a threshold likelihood of connectivity;

including, by the processing device, the first identity in an alert indicating the potential synthetic identity;
determining, by the processing device and from the links between the nodes, that a second degree of connectivity among a second subset of the nodes exceeds the threshold connectivity and that links among the second subset of the nodes represents activity having a second likelihood of connectivity greater than the threshold likelihood of connectivity;
excluding, from the alert, a second identity represented by a node in the second subset of the nodes; and
transmitting, by the processing device and to a computing device associated with the online service, the alert to prevent or delay completion of an online transaction with the online service by the potential synthetic identity and to update a graphical interface displayed by a display device of the computing device associated with the online service to include a visual indicator of the first degree of connectivity exceeding the threshold connectivity.