Patent ID: 8676684

Claim:
A method for providing a risk score to at least one of a plurality of merchants to be used thereby to determine whether to proceed with a not yet completed transaction, the method comprising: storing, by one or more computing devices, transaction data related to a plurality of past transactions between a plurality of network devices and the plurality of merchants; identifying, by the one or more computing devices, as being fraudulent devices those of the plurality of network devices associated in the transaction data with fraudulent or abusive transactions; identifying, by the one or more computing devices, characteristics common to those of the plurality of network devices that have been identified as being fraudulent devices; constructing, by the one or more computing devices, a plurality of profiles based on the identified characteristics, wherein each of the profiles comprises one or more of the identified characteristics; receiving, by the one or more computing devices, new transaction data associated with the not yet completed transaction, wherein the new transaction data includes a value for each of the one or more identified characteristics of each of the plurality of profiles; identifying, by the one or more computing devices, those of the plurality of network devices that belong to each of the plurality of profiles, wherein, for each of the plurality of profiles, each of the plurality of network devices that belongs to the profile is associated with the value included in the new transaction data for each of the one or more identified characteristics of the profile; determining, by the one or more computing devices, a portion of those of the plurality of network devices that belong to each of the plurality of profiles that have been identified as being fraudulent devices; constructing, by the one or more computing devices, the risk score based at least in part on the portion of those of the plurality of network devices that belong to each of the profiles that have been identified as being fraudulent devices; and providing, by the one or more computing devices, the risk score to at least one of the plurality of merchants.