SCOTTSDALE, Arizona, December 21, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- 41st Parameter Inc., the leading provider of person-not-present fraud detection and prevention solutions, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company its latest patent, #7,853,533, for an invention the company has branded Time Differential Linking(TM) (TDL). TDL represents a significant advancement in the fight against online and mobile fraud, attaining commercially superior levels of granularity when distinguishing between the potentially billions of devices that initiate online interactions via the Internet each day. Deployed as an integral feature of DeviceInsight(TM), 41st Parameter's tag-less device intelligence and identification solution, TDL has proven uniquely effective at detecting account takeover attempts against financial institutions, in many cases being the sole mechanism able to distinguish between a genuine online transaction and a replay attack.

Enhanced precision in device identification achieved by TDL makes computed "device fingerprints" more effective for validating genuine requests for online account opening, login authentication, and transaction verification, as well as detecting signals of impending account takeover attacks. With the addition of TDL, DeviceInsight also has application as a superior-performing substitute for cookies or other forms of tagging which are increasingly running afoul of online privacy regulations, particularly in Europe. More accurate device recognition also contributes to better customer experiences through avoidance of unnecessary challenges to valid login attempts by legitimate customers using previously utilized devices.

With the addition of clock time differential to the already-broad selection of characteristics used to calculate a device print, DeviceInsight has been proven to uniquely identify a returning device with accuracy that is now 43% better for personal computers and up to 700% better for other browser-enabled devices including smartphones, tablets and even game consoles. Non-PC devices generally offer fewer attributes upon which to compute a device fingerprint, with ubiquitous Apple mobile products being amongst the most challenging for industry to identify. Neither the iPhone, iPod touch(R) nor the iPad(R) support Flash Shared Objects due to Apple's policy of not supporting Adobe Flash, a widely-adopted tagging technology historically used to identify returning online customers and devices. For these devices in particular, 41st Parameter's DeviceInsight with TDL provides a robust and tag-less alternative.

"Crime rings are becoming more sophisticated in their malware attacks, so companies and financial institutions need to leverage more sophisticated defenses, such as TDL, to stay one step ahead in the fight against online fraud," said Ori Eisen, founder and Chief Innovation Officer of 41st Parameter. "We are honored to receive this patent for our engineering innovation which has advanced not only fine-grained device identification but also proves a key competitive differentiator for us with financial institutions and ecommerce companies."