How Incognia Location Technology Works
Incognia’s proprietary location technology was developed over the past nine years and is deployed as a mobile SDK that is embedded in a mobile application and collects anonymous location sensor data from the mobile device. Incognia’s location technology uses data from not only GPS, but also WiFi, cellular and Bluetooth sensors, which makes it highly effective at detecting location spoofing, unlike fraud detection based on IP and GPS alone.
Learn more about location spoofing techniques in our eBook:
5 Ways Fraudsters Spoof Location
Delivering Frictionless Adaptive Authentication
For fraud prevention during key user interactions within the app, Incognia provides a risk score through the Incognia APIs, together with a confidence rating based on the correlation of current and historical user location behavior and device intelligence data and supporting evidence helping to differentiate legitimate users and fraudsters.
Deployed in over 100 million devices, Incognia has a powerful network effect that enables a highly precise risk signal with extremely low false-positive rates.
Understanding Incognia’s key location concepts
Using the location sensor data from the device, Incognia uses a number of key location behavior concepts to create Incognia’s unique location identity. These are the features that differentiate Incognia’s location technology and enable it to deliver superior location precision, to 10 feet and highly accurate fraud detection. In contrast most legacy fraud detection systems rely on IP and GPS location which has lower precision and is also commonly spoofed by fraudsters.
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Environments
Each location has a unique signature of GPS coordinates, and available Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular network signals. Incognia maps and correlates these signatures to create unique environments and uses this information to identify a device's location with high precision and accuracy, even indoors. Unlike fraud solutions relying solely on GPS, which can be easily spoofed, Incognia's approach to location is highly resistant to location spoofing and effective in detecting those techniques.
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Location Fingerprint
Each user has a unique location behavior pattern, like a location fingerprint, that comprises frequently visited locations specific to that user. As the user moves location this location fingerprint is constantly changing and updating making it extremely difficult to mimic or forge.
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Trusted Locations
The highly frequented locations by the user and device are classified as the user's trusted locations. When Incognia detects a user is in a trusted location, there is a higher probability of the transaction being legitimate and at lower risk for fraud, offering the opportunity of a frictionless authentication experience.
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Location Detection
Incognia uses geofencing and activity recognition techniques to detect if a device has significantly displaced its position. Recognizing this movement allows Incognia to preserve battery life by only collecting location events that matter, mainly at the moment when a device arrives or departs a particular location. By scanning Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals, Incognia can detect displacements in position and confirm that the device is at a different location, or returning to an already mapped location without having to pull GPS coordinates every time. In this way, Incognia minimizes battery consumption on the device to 0.5% in 24 hours.
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Watchlist
The Incognia technology is deployed in over 100 million devices providing a powerful network effect. Devices and locations that have been associated with fraud or suspicious behaviors are added to the Incognia Watchlist. As a customer of Incognia, any device or behavior on the watchlist will be indicated in the evidence list. This information will be used in the risk assessment.
Location as the ultimate trust signal
Data from more than 100 million devices with Incognia deployed clearly demonstrates the close correlation between location and trust.
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Trusted location
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90% of legitimate logins happen from Trusted Location
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95% of sensitive transactions that are not fraudulent happen from Trusted Locations
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88% of legitimate e-commerce purchases happen from Trusted Location
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Real-time address match
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85% of legitimate users open mobile bank accounts from a home address
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93% of billing addresses used in legitimate e-commerce transactions are home addresses
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Location permissions for higher performance
The Incognia location identity solution is most effective when as many users as possible allow the use of the location.
The Incognia SDK detects location points and collects location data solely to protect the user and to prevent fraud. Mobile users that do not provide their location permissions, and do not have their location turned on, will not generate location data, thus, are not able to benefit from Incognia features.
Incognia Optimum Performance Checklist
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Location services on
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Wi-fi on
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Foreground and background permission on
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Cellular on
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Precise location on
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Bluetooth on
Learn more about best practices for requesting location permissions in your mobile app.
Read our ebook Location Permissions - 5 Important Considerations.
Privacy-First Design
Location data can easily become very sensitive. That's why Incognia follows Privacy by Design in the development of our solution and we intentionally do not capture, store or associate any additional PII with location data.
Learn more about our privacy-first approach to location
Access our privacy page-
Incognia is compliant with data protection and privacy regulations including GDPR, CCPA, LGPD and SOC 2 Type 1
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We focus on hashing and encryption to protect the location data we collect
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Other techniques used include probabilistic set structure, differential privacy, and k-anonymity, bringing the data closer to full anonymization.
Key Differentiators
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Reduce ATO
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Reduce friction
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Reduce fraud
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Mobile-native technology
Leverages mobile sensors for higher performance -
Frictionless
Works in the background with no user interaction required
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Dynamic and secure
Very hard to spoof, mimic or fake -
Versatile
Integrates with any risk-engine or IAM flow or works standalone
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Immediate and easy to use
Integrates in minutes and provides actionable intelligence from day 1
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Powerful network effect
Deployed in over 100 million devices -
Privacy-First
Requires no capture or storage of additional PII -
Compliant
GDPR, CCPA, LGPD, and SOC 2 Type 1