Decentralized automatic phone fraud risk management

Abstract

Disclosed herein are methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for phone fraud prevention. One of the methods includes adding a first identifier of a first phone event of a first user into a blockchain managed by one or more devices on a decentralized network. The first identifier of the first phone event is classified into a list of phone fraud identifiers. A second identifier of a second phone event involving a second user is received. The second identifier is compared with the list of phone fraud identifiers that includes the first identifier. In a case where the second identifier matches a phone fraud identifier in the list of phone fraud identifiers, the first user is notified that the second phone event involves a risk of phone fraud.

Description

BACKGROUND[0001]Distributed ledger systems (DLSs), also referred to as consensus networks and / or blockchain networks, enable participating entities to store data securely and immutably. Examples of types of blockchain networks can include public blockchain networks, private blockchain networks, and consortium blockchain networks. A consortium blockchain network is provided for a selected group of entities that control the consensus process, and includes an access control layer.[0002]Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, uses telecommunication devices or services for illegal purposes or in illegal manners. Types of phone frauds include autodialers, telemarketing fraud, caller ID spoofing, telephone scams, mobile phone spam, and other types of frauds against a customer, a telecommunication company or a third party. Phone fraud is conducted as scammers, pranksters, or even harassers. The recipients of such phone fraud may be selected based on their perceived vulnerabilit...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0005]A clear advantage of using a decentralized database of blockchain to store the list of fraud identifiers is fraud prevention. A blockchain prevents people from making fraudulent transactions that would seriously harm the system. With so many computing nodes maintaining their own copies of the ledger, inserting a fake transaction into the blockchain is almost impossible. In phone frauds, fraudulent entities also try to harm the system. For example, fraudulent entities may make fake reports of “fraud identifier” to a system to disturb the operation of the system. If a system contains too many “fraud identifiers” that are actually not fraudulent, the increased false positive detection of phone frauds will become unacceptable. In a blockchain network, with many computing nodes conducting the verification and validation in hashing a data entry, the chance of faked “fraud identifier” being hashed into the blockchain effectively shrinks to zero. Moreover, fraud identifiers stored in a blockchain cannot be modified at copy of ledger without being detected by other copies of ledgers. Further, because a blockchain keeps track of every hashed transaction as chained “blocks”, the full processing history of a fraud identifier is available. For example, the full records of a fraud identifier being classified to a black list, a grey list or a white list or being removed from a black list, a grey list or a white list are all available to be viewed or audited through a blockchain. Also, the fraud identifiers are stored in copies of ledger across many computing nodes, which greatly improve the robustness of the system. Practically, the system will not fail in operation because those computing nodes do not all go down.

Problems solved by technology

With so many computing nodes maintaining their own copies of the ledger, inserting a fake transaction into the blockchain is almost impossible.

In phone frauds, fraudulent entities also try to harm the system.

For example, fraudulent entities may make fake reports of “fraud identifier” to a system to disturb the operation of the system.

If a system contains too many “fraud identifiers” that are actually not fraudulent, the increased false positive detection of phone frauds will become unacceptable.

Moreover, fraud identifiers stored in a blockchain cannot be modified at copy of ledger without being detected by other copies of ledgers.

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