Equifax Pitches Cross-Industry Fraud Detection

Equifax announced Tuesday a new tool that gives banks and consumers a method to identify, analyze and eliminate identity fraud.

Suspicious ID gives users quick analysis of suspicious activity, says Equifax, while decreasing the number of false positives that appear when a customer's information is entered incorrectly.

Equifax says that its technology is able to monitor a person's identity across dozens of industries and thousands of banks. That means patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed are picked up by Suspicious ID, which takes a deep dive into billions of ID and credit events.

"Financial institutions are constantly challenged to detect increasingly sophisticated fraud attempts. A growing reliance on online channels and instant credit approvals to increase revenues presents a host of opportunities for skilled identity thieves," says Andy K. Smith, Equifax's senior vice president of professional services, in a press release. "Suspicious ID effectively takes fraud prevention much further by identifying consumer behavioral patterns that are very difficult for impostors to fake."