Author: rohit

Upgraded RelevantID^® tool provides powerful 360-degree response to escalating problem of survey dupes and frauds

(NEW YORK – Oct 26, 2020) – Data quality solutions specialist Imperium (www.imperium.com) today announced the release of a significantly upgraded version of its flagship ID-validation tool RelevantID^®.

This major release is designed to help market research and panel organizations combat the rise of highly sophisticated synthetic identity frauds that are becoming increasingly difficult to catch using conventional fraud-detection models.

From today, the company’s powerful fraud-blocking tool Fraudience^® will be integrated into RelevantID^® as standard. New and existing clients will now automatically enjoy access to Fraudience^®, which monitors respondents’ behavior patterns against a proprietary research-based algorithm, quickly identifying potentially fraudulent respondents.

New RelevantID^® additionally includes FraudProbabilityScore, a machine-learning model that assesses passive and behavioral data, returning an extremely precise fraud assessment that detects fraud, bots, and jumpers/ghost completes in surveys.

“We’re confident that RelevantID^® offers a genuinely multi-level approach to fraud detection, combining passive machine data with behavioral data to provide a detailed picture of respondents’ fraud potential, while fully complying with stringent privacy laws like GDPR,” said Tim McCarthy, General Manager, Imperium.

McCarthy adds: “Businesses rely on us to consistently deliver top-level tools that assure data quality. Since supercharging RelevantID^® with Fraudience^® and FraudProbabilityScore, we’re seeing fraud capture scores skyrocket—on average by more than 5x—from 2.5% to 13.8%. Because we’re using a machine-learning model, our tools are recognizing new behavior patterns every day, making it easier to stay ahead of determined fraudsters.”

The announcement chimes with the findings in a report on the subject of synthetic identity fraud published this year by the Federal Reserve. The authors of the paper referred to an ID Analytics study estimating that traditional fraud-detection models lacked effectiveness in 85-95 percent of likely synthetic identity frauds.

The extensive link-analysis process that’s a core part of Imperium’s survey data quality solutions mirrors Federal Reserve recommendations that businesses adopt a ‘layered fraud mitigation approach’ incorporating ‘manual and technological data analysis’ to combat the most sophisticated fraud technologies.

About Imperium

Imperium provides a comprehensive suite of technology services and customized solutions to verify personal information and restrict fraudulent online activities. The world’s most respected market research and e-commerce businesses rely on Imperium’s superior technology and solutions to validate their customers’ identities, verify data accuracy, automate review processes and uncover the intelligence that improves profitability. The company’s flagship product RelevantID^® is widely recognized as the market research sector’s de facto data-quality and anti-fraud tool. In recent years, Imperium has invested heavily in machine learning, NLP and neural networks, capitalizing on its domain knowledge to expertly map fraudsters’ behavior. Last year, Imperium prevented 1 billion instances of fraud at source. www.imperium.com

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By Tim McCarthy, Imperium General Manager

While exponential developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine learning (ML) technology are creating fresh opportunities for advancement in almost every field of human endeavor, there are also dark forces at play.

A recent study by a prestigious British university rated so-called deepfakes (hyper-realistic audio and video trickery) as the ‘most worrying application of artificial intelligence’ because of its potential to further the aims of those involved in crime and terrorism. The report’s authors were concerned not only by the difficulties in detecting fake content but by the societal harm that could result from a universal distrust of media. Simply put, if everything can be faked, how do we know what’s real?

The hand-wringing over deepfake technology may feel like a million miles away from everyday life. Many of us will only ever encounter it as a kind of cinematic smoke and mirrors used to reverse the aging process on movie stars. You might even dabble with it yourself via one of the deepfake apps that allow people to insert themselves into pop videos or movie scenes.

But the underlying tech has serious implications for us all. At Imperium, we spend a lot of time anticipating the impact of increasingly sophisticated technology – like deepfakes – on ID fraud. We know that, globally, synthetic identity fraud is on the rise. According to McKinsey, it’s the fastest-growing type of financial crime in the U.S.

A synthetic ID can be created using a combination of real and fake information, some of which may be stolen or hacked from a database or even acquired on the dark web. If the activity only has a limited impact on the victim’s PII (personally identifying information), it could go unnoticed for months. Adding deepfake and synthetic AI tech into the mix just makes it easier for the perpetrators to build up more detailed synthetic IDs that lead to more serious levels of fraud.

It’s a long game. Small credit applications at the beginning attract little attention and allow fraudsters to establish what’s known as a ‘thin-file’ that can be used to move up to more substantial targets. It can be an expensive business. For our panel and survey clients, fraudsters not only leverage a significant financial cost on their organizations but also have the potential to chip away at the trusted brand they’ve worked so hard to build.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Accurately verifying applicants’ IDs during onboarding is critical – whether you’re vetting survey respondents, checking a loan application or verifying ballot requests. The good news is that the same AI that’s being used to create deepfakes, can be employed to spot synthetic IDs.

It’s a process that requires continuous monitoring and development, however. To create a robust system, multiple layers of security – that go over and above standard two-factor and knowledge-based authentication – will be required. These systems should incorporate both manual and technological data analysis, and deploy tactics including screening for multiple users with the same SSN or with accounts that originate from the same IP address, performing link analysis to check for PII overlaps, and comparing applicants’ behavior against ML-enabled algorithms.

There is, potentially, another weak point to consider: Synthetic IDs are sometimes too perfect. Real people have real histories that form a patchwork of physical and digital evidence in dozens of different data systems. Natural data trails are hard to fake because their reach stretches back years and include student loan details, old addresses and property records. Synthetic IDs either include some real details that don’t map with other records or are completely fake and have data that’s a little too neat to be true.

While tracking and trapping fraudsters will increasingly require the use of more sophisticated anti-fraud systems, it’s important to balance the requirement for greater transparency with the individual’s right to privacy. Which is why it’s crucial to partner with high-caliber ID verification providers who can implement world-class solutions, at the same time complying with the most stringent GDPR and CCPA regulations on information processing, storage and protection.

The importance of using AI ethically – particularly to support uses related to fairness, bias and non-discrimination – is a discussion-worthy topic on its own. But it’s my belief that we can – and should – push back against AI-based fraud with an equally powerful AI-enabled fraud-detection response.

With more and more companies and consumers interacting online, and where criminal transgressions can damage lives and destroy reputations, it’s our duty to mount a determined and effective defense of our data.

Tim McCarthy is General Manager at Imperium. He has over 15 years of experience managing market research and data collection services and is an expert in survey programming software, data analysis and data quality. Imperium is the foremost provider of technology services and customized solutions to panel and survey organizations, verifying personal information and restricting fraudulent online activities.

Gives stamp of approval to market research and panel organizations that pass muster

NEW YORK, Sep 21, 2020 – Imperium, one of the foremost providers of data-quality solutions, today announced the launch of a certification program designed to offer market research and panel organizations the opportunity to gain accreditation from one of the industry leaders in fraud prevention.

Imperium, which is best known in the market research industry for its data quality and anti-fraud tools, is introducing this new certification program to set a benchmark for the dedication to data quality. Believed to be the first of its kind in the sector, Imperium certification will be awarded to businesses that correctly and consistently deploy proven data-quality and anti-fraud services in addition to passing multiple quality and operational checks to validate best practice. Imperium will confirm what checks companies have in place, how often they are utilizing them, and what their settings are to determine whether they qualify.

Imperium certification is the next logical step for market research companies and panels looking to demonstrate a long-term commitment to delivering high-quality data to their customers. The certification process includes close analysis of anti-fraud tools to ensure the widest possible implementation across respondents and survey traffic. An annual review monitors continued compliance.

Cint and Dynata are two of the first companies to win Imperium’s Data Quality Certified seal.

“With digital fraud on the rise, it’s important that agencies are able to trust the mission-critical information they rely on to build close relationships with customers and to gain a competitive advantage in a fast-moving market,” said Tim McCarthy, General Manager, Imperium.

McCarthy adds: “Certification will enable commissioning brands to confirm that their supplier is doing everything possible to deliver the best and most accurate data, time after time. We only reward the highest levels of compliance because our professional reputation rests on the rigor of our anti-fraud and data-quality services. Companies that qualify for Imperium certification can be trusted for data quality.”

Imperium’s initiative is timely. According to Imperium’s own research, as many as 38 percent of survey respondents are duplicates, fraudsters or bots. In a recent Experian study, businesses surveyed admitted that 28 percent of their customer and prospect data was likely to be inaccurate, with only half of organizations polled considering the current state of their CRM or ERP data as ‘clean’. This, despite 98 percent of organizations believing that high-quality data was either ‘extremely important’ or ‘important’ in achieving their business objectives.

Imperium’s data integrity solutions deliver validated datasets via a series of invisible, fully automated processes, returning trusted, verified insights. More details can be found here.

About Imperium

Imperium provides a comprehensive suite of technology services and customized solutions to verify personal information and restrict fraudulent online activities. The world’s most respected market research and e-commerce businesses rely on Imperium’s superior technology and solutions to validate their customers’ identities, verify data accuracy, automate review processes and uncover the intelligence that improves profitability. Founded in 1990, Imperium pioneered digital technologies to validate identity, verify data accuracy, and automate review processes and is now a leader in online fraud detection and identity verification. The company’s flagship product RelevantID^® is widely recognized as the market research sector’s de facto data-quality and anti-fraud tool. In recent years, Imperium has invested heavily in machine learning, NLP and neural networks, capitalizing on its domain knowledge to expertly map fraudsters’ behavior. Last year, Imperium prevented 1 billion instances of fraud at source.

Imperium Adds Fraudience^®Type a message to its Leading Solution Suite

Imperium, the leader in data-quality and anti-fraud solutions for market research and e-commerce industries, is excited to announce the release of Fraudience. Drawing on its 15 years of fraud detection domain experience, Imperium created this robust new solution by amassing billions of digital patterns created by fraudsters and incorporating the incredible power of machine learning, NLP and neural networks.

Imperium’s mission is to help customers combat the constantly evolving threat to their data quality with the ultimate goal of stopping bad data at the point of entry – before it mingles with a company’s valid data. Over the years, using data science and machine learning tools, Imperium has collected a huge number of the patterns that exist in fraudsters’ behaviors, and can now identify and model those patterns to programmatically stop them.

In fact, the Fraudience solution was developed by mining billions of transactions to define predictive digital pattern models left by fraudsters, and can potentially increase fraud prevention by as much as 100%.

“Fraudsters and bad actors are smart and technically savvy,” said Imperium CEO Charlie Allieri. “Fraudience is a major development in the war to stop those whose mission it is to wreak havoc on a company’s data.”

Fraudience’s models have shown indisputable patterns of behavior that are indicative of bad quality. Those models are used to create a real-time blacklist of the bad IP addresses and that blacklist is updated daily as the company sees real one-time patterns of bad behavior. To give context, in order of magnitude, of the one million IP addresses Imperium regularly sees acting suspiciously, the system clearly identifies two hundred thousand or more as bad actors.

“Remarkably effective on its own stopping nearly 2x the fraud, Fraudience is even more powerful as part of our multilayered fraud prevention strategy,” said Nathan Lynch, co-CEO of Full Circle Research Company. “When combined with RelevantID^®Type a message and Real Answer^®Type a message, Fraudience delivers an important key data element that triangulates and significantly increases our fraud detection precision.”

Adding Fraudience to the current Imperium suite represents the industry’s most complete and advanced set of data quality solutions. Solutions that ultimately protect the reputations of organizations while saving them money.

About Imperium

Imperium is synonymous with Relevant ID / Digital Fingerprinting and has been the standard for stopping fraud and data quality for over 10 years. Over the last few years, Imperium has invested substantially in Machine Learning, NLP, and neural networks to capitalize on its massive data store and domain knowledge to mine behaviors of fraudsters. Imperium has developed a suite of solutions that work real time to stop fraud at its inception with the highest level of precision. Last year, Imperium stopped over 1 Billion instances of fraud. How clean is your data? Do a health check at https://www.imperium.com/healthcheck/.

New York, NY, Westport, CT, London, UK and Oslo, Norway: June 19, 2018: –

Confirmit, the world’s leading SaaS vendor for multi-channel Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, and Market Research solutions, today announced its partnership with Imperium, a world leader in Digital Fingerprinting, data verification and fraud protection. The partnership will help prevent duplicate entries or fraudulent survey participants in order to protect the integrity of data.

Imperium’s technology used with Confirmit’s solutions will enable companies to improve survey response rates, prevent automated participants or bots from completing surveys, and reduce the effort spent on data cleaning. Additionally, the technology increases data quality by determining a unique device fingerprint for each participant, thereby avoiding duplicate responses when using multiple sample sources, and protecting against fraudulent participants.

“The quality of online feedback data is a major concern for Market Research and Customer Experience program managers who rely on such data to make critical business decisions,” said Marshall Harrison, CEO, Imperium. “We want survey data to be as accurate as possible, and our technology will help Confirmit customers prevent duplicate survey entries and fraudulent participants giving dubious response data.”

Imperium’s technology, RelevantID, analyses several characteristics from a participant’s device and runs them through proprietary algorithms to calculate a unique device fingerprint. RelevantID will flag each time a participant starts a survey, so it is able to detect if multiple e-mail accounts are being used to take surveys from a single computer. In real time, RelevantID also identifies geographic location of the user considering multiple pieces of information (country, state, postal code, and IP address) and returns a fraud profile score that the company can use to decide whether to include or exclude them from the survey.

“Survey results can be significantly affected by a small percentage of duplicate or fraudulent respondents,” said Terry Lawlor, Executive Vice President for Product Management, Confirmit. “Our partnership with Imperium addresses the need for organizations to maximize data quality and protect against fraud. We have made it easier for our customers to implement RelevantID and to see the positive effect that Imperium’s technology can have on their feedback data.”

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About Confirmit
Confirmit is the world’s leading SaaS vendor for multi-channel Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, and Market Research solutions. The company has offices in Oslo (headquarters), Grimstad, London, Moscow, New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Vancouver, and Yaroslavl. Confirmit’s software is also distributed through partner resellers in Madrid, Milan, Salvador, and Tokyo.

Confirmit powers Global 5000 companies and Market Research agencies worldwide with a wide range of software products for feedback / data collection, panel management, data processing, analysis, and reporting. Customers include Aurora, British Airways, British Standards Institution, Copart, Cross-Tab, Dow Chemical, GfK, GlaxoSmithKline, GMO Research, KeepFactor, Morehead Associates, Nielsen, Research Now, RS Components, QRS, SSI, Sony Mobile Communications, and Swisscom. Visit www.confirmit.com for more information.

About Imperium
Imperium is the leading provider of data quality, and anti-fraud solutions for the marketing research industry and beyond. For more than ten years, some of the most respected global companies have come to rely on our industry-leading suite of technological services, designed to verify self-reported personal information and restrict fraudulent online activities. Imperium services include RelevantID^®, Verity^®, Verity Append^™, Verity Challenge^™, Verity SSN^™, Real Answer^®, Capture^®, Address Correction^™ and ChildGuardOnline^™. For more information please visit www.imperium.com.

Confirmit Media Contact

Sara Beth Fahey
Matter Communications
Confirmit@matternow.com

Imperium Media Contact
Jennifer Weitz
Imperium
jweitz@imperium.com

Westport, CT, September 12, 2017 –

WESTPORT, CT /PRNewswire/ Imperium, the leader in data quality and anti-fraud solutions for the Market Research and E-commerce industries today announced that it has entered into an agreement to lead a merger with data validation and identity verification solutions provider TrueSample. The merger positions Imperium as the unrivaled leader in data quality, identity verification and anti-fraud solutions.

“Now, under the Imperium brand, the best of breed solutions and strengths of both companies are combined to meet the ever more complex challenges of online fraud detection and identity verification.” said Marshall C. Harrison, founder and CEO of Imperium.

The two companies will operate as separate entities during a thoughtful integration period under Mr. Harrison’s overall leadership, and their respective customers will continue to have access to the best-in-class services and support that the industry relies upon today to maintain high standards of data quality. TrueSample clients will be able to continue using their existing products and services, and will experience the benefits of a unified client-focused services model.

“After a successful spin-out from SurveyMonkey, we at TrueSample felt the time was right to join forces with Imperium,” said Mark Menig, CEO of TrueSample. “Once fully integrated, the combined company will have greater scale and additional resources to continue to innovate and meet the needs of our customers.”

About Imperium
Imperium provides a comprehensive suite of technology services and customized solutions to verify personal information and restrict fraudulent online activities. The world’s most respected market research and e-commerce businesses rely on Imperium’s superior technology and custom engineered solutions to validate their customers’ identities, verify data accuracy, automate review processes and uncover the intelligence that improves profitability.

Denver, Colorado, May 5, 2015 – Precision Sample, backing up its ongoing commitment to lead the industry in data quality, announced today that it has applied Imperium’s Verity^®, respondent validation platform across its entire US panel exceeding 3.5 million active respondents. Verity^® reduces fraud by confirming the accuracy of an individual’s self-reported data against billions of records across thousands of databases.

When asked about this decision, Don Golden, President of Precision Sample commented:

“Delivering clean, valid data to our clients has been our goal since day 1. Over the past year, we’ve conducted extensive research-on-research on Verity^® with our partners at MetrixLab and found meaningful quality and consistency gains. Armed with this information, it was an easy decision to expand Verity^® coverage across the panel and offer only Verity^® validated respondents on all studies by default at no additional cost to our customers.”

Additionally, Precision Sample has renewed its RelevantID^® agreement with Imperium into 2016 offering its clients industry standard multi-layer respondent validation and de-duplication technologies ensuring the highest quality sample on every engagement.

About Precision Sample
Founded in 2010, Precision Sample is a member of the MetrixLab & Macromill family of companies and one of the largest and fastest growing sample providers in the market research industry. With a focus on emerging technologies, Precision Sample helps it’s customers connect with consumers where they live via traditional online methods as well as at social networks and via mobile devices. Precision Sample’s clients have access to one of the most representative and dynamic panels available with over 4,000,000 highly vetted, active respondents across the US, Canada, UK & Australia growing at a rate of over 300,000 new panelists monthly. 2015 will see the expansion of Precision Sample’s capabilities with new panels being established in Latin America and APAC as well as an unacculturated Hispanic panel in the United States. For more information, visit www.PrecisionSample.com

About Imperium
Imperium is the leading provider of data quality, and anti-fraud solutions for the marketing research industry and beyond. For more than ten years, some of the most respected global companies have come to rely on our industry-leading suite of technological services, designed to verify self-reported personal information and restrict fraudulent online activities. Imperium services include RelevantID^®, Verity^®, Real Answer^®, Capture^®, Address Correction^™ and ChildGuardOnline^™. Imperium is independently owned, and solely focused on helping companies guarantee data integrity and comply with industry regulations. For more information visit www.imperium.com.

April 1, 2015 – Imperium announces the launch of Real Answer^®, an automated solution designed to help companies achieve a higher-degree of confidence in their data by ensuring the authenticity and quality of open-ended survey responses.

How does Real Answer work?
Real Answer evaluates open-ended survey responses against several critical factors, and determines the significance of those factors. A Real Answer score of 0 to 100 is then generated based on the quality of the response given. The numeric Real Answer score is provided along with an indication of which factors contributed to the score. Real Answer is available for use in 27 languages. The open-ended responses can be batch translated.

Factors Used to Determine Real Answer Scores:

• Garbage words. Real Answer will check and score for words not found in the dictionary. There is extensive localization for each of the languages.
• Bad language, words & expressions. Real Answer will check and score for profanity, sexist, racist, and ethnically offensive terms.
• Pasted responses. Real Answer will detect and score an answer that has been pasted from a respondent’s clipboard.
• Similarity. Real Answer will detect and score an answer that is identical or substantially similar to previous answers.
• Robot responses. Real Answer will detect and score answers that have been programmatically inserted.
• Engagement. Real Answer will evaluate an answer with reference to the length of response as compared to other answers to the same question to ensure respondent engagement.

Why use Real Answer?

• Real Answer scores inform and improve decision-making – Real Answer scores, and the factors that impacted scores are provided for each open-ended response. Accept, or reject responses using this additional context.
• Undesirable respondents are prevented from registering, or completing surveys – Save on incentive costs while ensuring data quality as Real Answer scores can be used to reroute, or terminate respondents dynamically.
• Automated data cleaning saves time and money – Real Answer eliminates the time and expense involved in manually cleaning data files.
• Guarantee that poor quality data is removed before sharing with key stakeholders or clients.

Real Answer Features

• Results in real time.
• No interruption to the user experience or automated redirection of users.
• Cloud-based solution, does not require dedicated hardware or infrastructure.
• Can be used as needed, on each question within a specific survey, or sporadically.
• Available in 27 languages.

Customized Approach

As with all Imperium products, Real Answer was designed to meet the data quality needs of our vast, global market research client base. Real Answer can be used on an ad hoc basis or standard on every project. We’d like to discuss how our solutions can benefit you.