New | Threatmetrix creates virtual personas out of digital debris to detect internet fraud
Company counts Alipay, Ping An Bank and Facebook as customers
When you shop online, you leave behind a digital trail of debris -- information about the device you’re using, your IP address, e-mail account and credit card information.
These digital debris, anonymized and encrypted, are now being swept up by a company called Threatmetrix to form a digital persona.
Whenever an e-commerce platform executes a transaction, it can be matched against a database of digital personas in real time to determine if the sale is genuine, or if there’s any fraud involved.
“We help e-commerce companies and banks figure out who’s a good person and who’s a bad person, in real time,” said Armen Najarian, chief marketing officer of San Francisco-based Threatmetrix, in an interview in Hong Kong.
Founded in 2005, Threatmetrix’s database now processes 75 million transactions every day across the globe. Its database carries information of over 4 billion unique devices, over a billion login credentials and 670 million IP addresses, according to Threatmetrix. Najarian said that the company has been 95 per cent accurate in determining whether or not a transaction is legitimate.
“Threatmetrix references bits of information coming through from the transaction against the network we have amassed over the years,” he said. “We’re looking for a few things - do we recognise the device that the person is using? Are these credentials, or the e-mail address used known to us?”
China, the world’s second-largest economy, is one of the most promising markets for Threatmetrix.