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

Claim 12:
13. 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 connected nodes, wherein the common characteristics are determined based on the transaction data;
determining, by the processing device, node edge densities for the nodes, wherein a node edge density indicates a node-to-link ratio among a subset of the nodes, wherein one or more of the determined node edge densities have one or more values that prevent or hinder detection of synthetic identities via a visual inspection of a graphical display of the graph data structure;
identifying, by the processing device, 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 corresponding to multiple individuals;
computing, by the processing device and based on the node edge densities and the weights, degrees of connectivity for respective subsets of the nodes;
detecting, as a potential synthetic identity, a target identity that is usable for accessing an online service and that is represented by a node in a subset of the nodes, wherein detecting the potential synthetic identity comprises determining that a degree of connectivity among the subset of the nodes exceeds a threshold connectivity, the degree of connectivity indicating electronic communications involving a subset of the individuals represented by the subset of the nodes;
including, by the processing device, the target identity in an alert indicating the potential synthetic identity; and
transmitting, by the processing device, the alert to a computing device associated with the online service, the alert usable 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 degree of connectivity exceeding the threshold connectivity.