How Email Insights determines identity trust and prevents fraud

The average American changes their address every five years. They change their phone number and credit card every three years. They get a new cell phone every two years. In the grand scheme of things, that’s no time at all. But email addresses have staying power — they rarely change. A customer’s email address is uniquely theirs. And that makes it one of the most relevant parts of their current identity. “Email addresses are the most important identity key that we have access to,” said Matthew Jones, Kount Data Science Manager, at Kount’s Fall 2020 Digital Protection Summit. To understand what businesses can learn from email addresses, look no further than Email Insights, Kount’s latest identity trust and fraud prevention solution. What is Kount’s Email Insights? The rise in eCommerce adoption has conditioned consumers to provide their email addresses in exchange for things like receipts and shipping confirmations. It’s a simple trade for customers. And it’s a deep well of information for businesses that seek to confirm the customer’s identity trust and personalize the customer’s experience based on that trust level. Email Insights is the most robust indicator of an email’s level of trust. With data from Kount’s Identity Trust Global NetworkTM, businesses can determine identity trust quickly and accurately. Email Insights is one of more than 130 data sources that fuels Kount’s network, which includes payments, location, and digital identifier data. In addition to predicting and stopping fraud, it can help businesses understand a customer’s lifetime value and likelihood of making repeat purchases. Email Insights is now available to Kount customers at no cost. It’s native to the Kount platform, which makes insights accessible in real time to inform fraud and trust decisions. How Email Insights establishes identity trust and prevent fraud Email Insights uses identity trust data to determine an email address’s date first seen and date last seen. Knowing the age of an email address is as essential at account creation as it is at payment confirmation. It can signal additional friction is needed to authenticate the identity behind the transaction, preventing fraud. “Date first seen describes the date that Kount first saw an email address,” Jones said. “It’s an easy way to identify if something is fraudulent. An email with an age of zero means that we’ve never seen it before. Now, this could be someone who’s never used a Kount merchant before. But a lot of the time, that email address has been created on this day to commit fraud.” The date last seen can indicate that an email that hasn’t been seen in two years, for example, may have been accessed through account takeover fraud. Email Insights can also show distinct billing addresses, payment tokens, and more associated with that email. But it’s important to note that effective fraud prevention relies on a combination of fraud and risk signals to generate complete authentication details. Email Insights doesn’t replace Kount’s Omniscore, the actionable transaction safety rating that Kount’s AI produces. “Email Insights provides additional flavor and context for why Omniscores are the way they are,” Jones explained. “We’re using insights to streamline the manual review process and automate thought processes for what are hundreds or thousands of reviews for some businesses.” Business benefits of Email Insights Of course, good or new customers can create a new email address for any number of reasons. Creating a new address doesn’t automatically signal a concern. And it doesn’t mean Kount rejects new emails outright. “Generally, fraudsters aren’t interested in performing a two-year con with email addresses where they create one, buy something legitimately, and then wait for two years to start committing fraud,” Jones said. “It’s all about getting as much money as they can as quickly as they can.” So businesses need a network like Kount’s to know the difference. The Identity Trust Global Network consists of fraud and trust signals from over half a billion email addresses. It spans 32 billion interactions and 17.5 billion devices screened annually across 75 business sectors and over 50 payment providers and card networks. Kount’s next-generation AI links the network. And it establishes real-time trust for each identity behind a payment transaction, login, or account creation. Overall, Email Insights is good news for businesses that want to Receive a score for the trustworthiness of an email address. Know why an email address receives a certain score. Know if an email address has been associated with criminal fraud, friendly fraud, or credit risk. Know if the person behind the email address is or could be a valuable customer. “Businesses want as much detail as possible to determine identity trust. Kount’s Email Insights delivers immediate value,” said Rich Stuppy, Kount’s Chief Customer Experience Officer. “Many businesses have fraud use cases where a zero email age is a strong indicator of risk. Many Kount customers have implemented Email Insights and reduced chargebacks, manual reviews, and false positives.”