Patent ID: 8621209

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying a program executable by a computing device, the program comprising: code that obtains an identification of a user account from a user at a client, the user account being associated with one of a plurality of account types; code that determines a minimum confidence threshold and a minimum inverse confidence threshold based at least in part on the one of the plurality of account types; code that presents a plurality of authentication questions to the user, the plurality of authentication questions being determined based at least in part on order history information associated with the user account and a characteristic associated with the client; code that obtains a corresponding answer to each of a subset of the plurality of authentication questions from the user, each of the answers being associated with a respective authentication point value; code that generates a confidence score for the user, wherein the confidence score is increased by the respective authentication point values of the answers that are correct; code that generates an inverse confidence score for the user, wherein the inverse confidence score is increased by the respective authentication point values of the answers that are incorrect; code that determines whether the confidence score meets the minimum confidence threshold and whether the inverse confidence score meets the minimum inverse confidence threshold; code that authorizes access by the client to a resource associated with the user account in response to determining that the confidence score meets the minimum confidence threshold and the inverse confidence score does not meet the minimum inverse confidence threshold; code that presents at least one additional authentication question to the user in response to determining that the confidence score does not meet the minimum confidence threshold and the inverse confidence score does not meet the minimum inverse confidence threshold; and code that disables access by the client to any resource associated with the user account in response to determining that the inverse confidence score meets the minimum inverse confidence threshold.