There are more than 7.9 billion email accounts worldwide¹ across an estimated 4.3 billion active email users.² That means more than half of the world’s population has an email address. As a result, a person’s email is a valuable piece of information that can serve as a unique identity within the digital space. It is used heavily in new account openings, account maintenance and card-not-present transactions.  

How to leverage the ubiquity of email and its inherent intelligence to boost fraud prevention and identity risk assessment was the topic at hand in the Identity Trust Pulse podcast. Ian Griffin, Senior Product Management Director and Maanas Godugunur, Fraud and Identity Market Planning Director, share insights about the vast potential of email intelligence to enhance identity verification and strengthen fraud prevention. 

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A goldmine of data 

Email addresses are rich with transaction history and behaviour. They are also one of the most stable and enduring pieces of information. A person’s physical address is more likely to change than their email address. In fact, more than 50% of people have had the same email address for over 10 years,³ making email an extremely useful component of a consumer’s digital identity.  
 
Just how stable is an email address? Using himself as an example, Griffin notes that in the last 20 years he has changed his physical address seven times, his phone number four times and transacted with over 20 different devices (tablets, phone, computers) from various IP addresses. Throughout all these years and changes, his email has been the one constant. 
 
Email also serves as the primary means of communication between a company and its customers. According to Statista, 55%⁴ of retail customers prefer email as their primary method of communication. In the U.S., email is the second highest form of personal communication after text messaging. These elements all contribute to the value of a person’s email address for risk assessment, decision making and fraud prevention. 

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A key to human behaviour  

“The most important element in catching fraud is to understand a consumer’s real behaviour,” said Griffin. How a user interacts with their underlying email provides that critical lens. It helps to identify the typical behaviours associated with that email address, so any abnormal activity stands out.  
 
For example, assume a consumer’s email is used a handful of times per month to check bank accounts, order food delivery or make an online purchase. If it is then used 30 times in one day, that would be highly atypical and raise a red flag.  
 
But anomalous activity is not always indicative of fraud. An email associated with a specific billing address, IP address, or phone number that has a surge of transactions using the email with different elements, might appear suspicious. However, it could simply mean the consumer is traveling or using a friend’s device to order and ship a gift to another address.   
 
There are many data points that are used in association with an email address. Social media data is one, along with name, shipping address, billing address, phone number, domain name, and IP address. Each element provides additional texture. Understanding how the various elements interact with the email address – are they aligned or not – can be extremely valuable as an indicator of fraud.  

When looking at social media in context with an email address to proactively identify fraud, it is important to note whether the social media account is active. Is there a profile picture? Are there friend counts or recent posts? Does the name of the social media account match the name of the email owner? These all provide clues that inform fraud decisions.  
 
Leveraging the intelligence from the numerous data variables associated with an email address to verify a consumer’s identity and assess risk is where solutions such as LexisNexis® Emailage® come in. 

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Strengthening identity verification with technology

Emailage® uses email intelligence as a core risk identifier for fraud prevention. It brings together traditional data, digital data and dynamic fraud signals to obtain a 360-degree view of the customer behind the transaction.  
 
Emailage assigns a confidence score based on how closely pairs of data points, such as billing addresses and phone numbers, align with the email address. A mismatch lowers the score, which may prompt further authentication steps. A lower confidence score does not necessarily indicate the transaction is fraudulent. Rather, it suggests that the organisation should take note – perhaps adding a step-up to authenticate the transaction or providing another layer of fraud intelligence to ensure the transaction is legitimate. Emailage offers an early red flag. It makes sure everything syncs up and looks correct based on the user’s past behaviours. 
 
Fraud events occur at every stage of the customer's journey. Emailage provides insight to identify high-risk events and differentiate legitimate users from fraudsters for new account opening, card-not-present transactions, account maintenance, payments and transactions. It enables organisations to be proactive in detecting various types of fraud – from chargeback and first-party fraud to account takeover and synthetic ID fraud.  

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The next horizon