Email Scanning for Early Data Breach Notifications
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users are often unaware of data breaches affecting their personal information until it is published on the Dark Web, leading to potential identity theft, as current identity theft monitoring services lack comprehensive coverage of all service providers and delayed notifications from service providers.
Innovation Solution
A system that scans a user's email to identify service providers, searches data breach reporting databases for these providers, and provides early warnings to users if their personal information is likely exposed, allowing for proactive security measures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If identity theft monitoring services monitor the Dark Web for exposed personal information, then users can be notified of breaches, but by the time notification occurs the information has already been sold to criminals
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by scanning user emails to proactively identify service providers before monitoring for breaches. This allows the system to establish a baseline of which providers the user interacts with, enabling earlier detection and notification when breaches are found, rather than waiting for Dark Web publication
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses email accounts as an intermediary to indirectly identify service providers. Instead of directly accessing provider databases or requiring users to manually input all providers, the system scans email correspondence to infer which providers the user has accounts with, creating a reliable indirect method for comprehensive coverage
2Reliability
If service providers notify users of data breaches, then users can take protective actions, but notification occurs much later after the breach has already happened
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by establishing a comprehensive list of service providers through email scanning before breaches occur. This pre-established database enables the system to immediately identify and notify users when their providers are breached, rather than waiting for official provider notifications
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback by continuously monitoring breach databases and comparing them against the user's service provider list. When a match is found, the system immediately feeds back a notification to the user, creating a real-time alert system that operates independently of provider notification timelines
3Device complexity
If identity theft services monitor only known service providers, then monitoring is more manageable, but they cannot detect breaches at all service providers where users have accounts
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses the user's own email account as a self-service source to automatically generate a personalized list of service providers. By scanning the user's inbox, the system extracts provider information directly from the user's communication history, eliminating the need for manual user input or reliance on incomplete external provider lists
Solution Approach 2:
The email scanning mechanism serves multiple functions: it identifies service providers, establishes user-provider relationships, and creates a dynamic, personalized monitoring list. This single mechanism replaces multiple separate processes for provider identification and list maintenance, achieving comprehensive coverage without proportionally increasing system complexity
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are techniques for providing an early warning notification to a user if the user was likely involved in a data breach. In an aspect, an apparatus scans an email account of a user of a user device to identify a set of service providers from which the email account of the user has received one or more emails, searches one or more data breach reporting databases for at least a subset of the set of service providers, and provides an indication to the user of whether personal information of the user is likely to have been exposed in a data breach, wherein the personal information of the user is likely to have been exposed in the data breach based on at least one service provider of the set of service providers being present in at least one of the one or more data breach reporting databases.