Telephonic communications – With usage measurement – Call charge metering or monitoring
Patent
1995-11-28
1998-05-19
Kuntz, Curtis
Telephonic communications
With usage measurement
Call charge metering or monitoring
379112, 379145, 379189, 379196, H04M 1500
Patent
active
057546320
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to debt management in a communications network and particularly, but not exclusively, to the detection of customer accounts obtained by fraud.
2. Related Art
In a modern communications network such as the United Kingdom public switched telephone network (PSTN), the billing system is a sophisticated set of functions including Debt Management, which is a process to progress the collection of overdue payments including the issue of standard letters. Such a billing system is described in more detail in the article at pages 273 to 278 of British Telecommunications Engineering, Volume 11, Part 4, January 1993.
The concern of the present invention lies principally in combatting fraudulent applications for telecommunications services, which will usually be telephone service.
It should be noted that EP-A-0212654 discloses a toll telecommunications network in which a call originated by a calling customer is barred when the billing number involved with the call has a predetermined billing status such as delinquent payment. The toll network includes a list of all the billing numbers having this status. Furthermore EP-A-0583135, published on 16.sup.th February 1994, discloses a virtual communications network which includes a so-called "screening filter" for each set of call-originating locations. This filter allows or denies calls on an individual basis from the corresponding set of originating locations to each set of call destinations in dependence on the previous history of calls from the corresponding set of originating locations.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a system for determining whether a user associated with a first customer account in a communications network is probably making calls on a further customer account in the network, the network including a billing system comprising a database of customer account information and of account-associated call logging information including called numbers, each customer account comprising customer name and address information, the system comprising processing means for accessing, in use, the database for selecting the further customer account, for obtaining a group of called numbers associated with the first account and a group of called numbers associated with the selected further account, for comparing the respective obtained groups and, if the degree of similarity of the calling characteristics of the two customer accounts meets a predetermined criterion, providing an indication that the user is probably making calls on the selected further customer account.
The predetermined criterion may comprise a requirement that a called number having a predetermined number of occurrences in one of the compared groups of called numbers also has the same number of occurrences in the other compared group.
Alternatively or in addition it may comprise a requirement that a set of different called numbers occurring in one of the compared groups of called numbers also occurs in the other compared group.
The system may be for use for detecting fraud in a communications network in which each customer account further comprises a settable indicator which when set indicates that the account is a debt account having a predetermined debt status. In such a case the processing means may be arranged to operate in response to the first customer account being a debt account, the indication, if provided, being that the selected further customer account is a probable fraudulent-application account.
In such a system the processing means may, in use, select further customer accounts sequentially from the database and thereby perform such comparisons in respect of the first account and each of the further customer accounts in turn. As an alternative the processing means may include means for including the first account in a list of debt accounts and means for performing, in use, comparisons in respect of the selected further customer account and each of th
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British Telecommunications public limited company
Kuntz Curtis
Tieu Binh K.
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