Intersections Inc. Launches AI-Powered Identity Theft Protection with IBM Watson

Intersections provider of Identity Guard®, the industry pioneer in identity theft protection services, today launched Identity Guard with Watson, a class-changing offering that harnesses the power of IBM Watson to provide the fastest, most comprehensive and most sophisticated identity protection services available.

“Identity Guard with Watson is true, next-generation identity theft protection,” said Melba Amissi, Intersections’ Chief Operating Officer. “It goes well beyond traditional credit monitoring to provide customized preventative protection, powered by artificial intelligence and based on an individual’s unique profile and actions – both online and in the real world. No other service comes close to providing the same level of financial and lifestyle protection.”

Javelin Strategy and Research found 16.4 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2017, the highest number on record. The study also found that fraudsters are coming up with even more sophisticated and insidious means of countering fraud prevention efforts, putting at risk a much broader range of accounts than those covered by traditional credit monitoring.

Unlike any other identity theft product, Identity Guard uses the power of IBM Watson cognitive computing to personalize and customize its protection against identity theft and misuse of personal information. Identity Guard’s algorithms can predict which digital habits lead to potential vulnerabilities and provide direction on correcting those habits, and IBM Watson scans millions of news articles, posts and social media comments daily to provide warning of relevant threats. “For example, if a new phishing scam hits a member’s bank, that individual will receive a custom alert. This is revolutionary, one-of-a-kind technology for preventing identity theft” said Todd Jones, VP of New Product Development at Intersections.

Identity Guard with Watson services include:

• Expanded Dark Web Monitoring — In tandem with Watson, Identity Guard is the only service using multiple data providers to continuously scan the dark web for multiple unique data points.
• Social Insights — Leveraging the power of Watson, Identity Guard evaluates members’ social media footprints and provides a complete picture of their social reputation, with tips on how to improve it.
• Social Privacy Manager — By tracking changes in social platforms’ privacy policies, Identity Guard suggests changes to privacy settings, which it will update for the user.
• Anti-Phishing Technology — Unlike other solutions, Identity Guard’s anti-phishing capacities integrate with mobile devices’ native browsers. This protects members from the largest single risk factor for individual targets.
• Cyber-bullying Monitoring — Watson’s language and sentiment analysis helps parents identify and take action against social media cyberbullying.

Independent third-party testing has also demonstrated that Identity Guard with Watson has the shortest average response time for inquires made with the three major credit bureaus, compared with other competitors. The earlier an alert about a potential threat involving the misuse of personal information, the better equipped an individual will be to resolve it. Components of Identity Guard with Watson provide feedback loops so consumers can alert their institutions when fraud attempts are seen as a result of warnings from Identity Guard with Watson.

“With IBM Watson, we put artificial intelligence, machine self-learning, human-computer interaction, natural language processing and data mining together into a single comprehensive service,” said Todd Jones. “We monitor more data and gather more insights about threats than anyone.”