Fraud prevention provider Kount is strengthening its artificial intelligence-powered Identity Trust Global Network with software for determining how long email addresses have been in use.
Because fraudsters tend to use newly created email accounts to avoid being associated with past scams, the Email First Seen tool will help merchants quickly and accurately evaluate identity trust.
The email screening tool comes less than a month after Kount launched its Identity Trust Global Network to provide trust and fraud signals from more than a half a billion email addresses, 32 billion interactions and 17.5 bill devices annually. The network covers more than 75 industries and 50 payments providers and card networks.
"Most e-commerce interactions request a customer email address in order to proceed with a transaction, including payments," said Rich Stuppy, chief customer experience officer at Boise, Idaho-based Kount. "Understanding if the email used was just created helps businesses determine if there may be low trust in the interaction."
Many businesses have fraud use cases in which an e-mail age of zero is a strong indicator of risk, Stuppy added.
Email First Seen operates as one of many data elements in the Kount identity network, which analyzes 2.7 billion fraud signals for each interaction.
The Identity Trust Global Network collects information from 6,500 digital businesses, including payments data, location identifier data, and digital data identifiers. The network screens transactions and interactions in real time to establish a trust level for each identity behind a payment, login or account creation.
"Kount's platform can be configured to match our customer's policy about what constitutes a new account for a particular use case," Stuppy said. "There are instances when good customers create new e-mail addresses, and it takes a network with the depth and breadth of data like Kount's in order to understand the difference."
Putting email start dates front and center in fraud screening is not a new concept in e-commerce protection. For example, Arizona-based
As email addresses will continue to be a key identity factor into the foreseeable future, fraud prevention companies are fighting back with these new intelligence tools.
"Fraud is complex, sophisticated and evolving," Stuppy said. "Bad actors will attempt different tactics to push fake credentials through."
It is crucial to use artificial intelligence to link transactions in real time "across a number of industries, geographies, payment providers and networks," he added.
