Identity score

An identity score is a system for detecting identity theft. Identity scores are increasingly being adopted as a means to prevent fraud in business and as a tool to verify and correct public records.

Identity scores incorporate a broad set of consumer data that gauges a person’s legitimacy. Identity score components can include (but are not limited to) personal identifiers, public records, Internet data, government records, corporate data, predicted behavior patterns based on empiric data, self-assessed behavior patterns, and credit records.

Identity scoring was originally developed for use by financial services firms, to measure the fraud risk for new customers opening accounts. Typical external credit and fraud checks often fail to detect erroneous background information.

Identity scoring is also being tested as a means for financial institutions to comply with criminal investigations and antiterrorism measures such as the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the USA PATRIOT Act. Usage of fraud verification tools and third-party authentication systems to verify identities and “red flag” suspicious activity is greatly enhanced by identity scoring.

Identity scores are built from collecting information from a variety of sources and analyzing discernible patterns from the total information. These records can generally be broken down into three categories: Public records, private records, and credit records.

Public records can include (but are not limited to) any of the following sources:

Private (non-credit) records can include (but are not limited to) any of the following sources:

Private (credit) records can include (but are not limited to) any of the following sources:

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Wikipedia