Patent Issued for Safe logon (USPTO 11196734): Allstate Insurance Company

2021 DEC 29 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors De Guia, Nicolette (Chicago, IL, US), Hansen, Mark D. (Greensboro, NC, US), Harris, David (Wheaton, IL, US), Parkinson, John (Burlington, VT, US), filed on July 23, 2019, was published online on December 7, 2021, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11196734 is assigned to Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Protecting confidential information in today’s online environment is difficult due to the increased connectivity and the increased number of user accounts accessible via web enabled computing devices. Creating mutual trust between a user and a vendor through use of a website or mobile application requires that the user trust the operating policies and data use and sharing practices of the site or application and the site trusts the user’s identity. This is challenging in the digital dimension, when the two entities may never meet and must depend on an exchange of information, third party verification services, and multi-factor authentication mechanisms.

“Current methods and systems of authenticating users may expose a user’s credentials or use arbitrary credentialing semantics which are not preferred by vendors. These existing methods and systems for exchanging information between users and vendors introduce friction into the process of using a vendor’s website or mobile application for purchases through third party verification services.

“Therefore, there is a desire for a system that implements a more convenient mechanism to identify trusted sites combined with a mechanism to reliably confirm a user’s identity that establishes and enhances mutual trust while reducing friction.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In light of the foregoing background, the following presents a simplified summary of the present disclosure in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the invention. This summary is not an extensive overview of the invention. It is not intended to identify key or critical elements of the invention or to delineate the scope of the invention. The following summary merely presents some concepts of the invention in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description provided below.

“Aspects of the disclosure address one or more of the issues mentioned above by disclosing methods, computer readable storage media, software, systems, and apparatuses to perform a trusted online transaction between a user and a vendor. A user can trust that a site using the safe logon button is a trusted site that has been verified and audited to ensure that its policies and practices meet minimum standards for privacy, data sharing, and compliance. A vendor can trust that the system has verified the identity of the user.

“In addition, the system compares a user’s privacy preference with a privacy policy of a vendor and, in some embodiments, to recommend alternative vendors having privacy policies more closely matching the user’s privacy preferences. The recommended alternative vendors may be output for display to the user along with indications of various qualities of the vendors’ privacy policies, and indications of how, or if, those qualities conform to, or lack conformance with, the user’s privacy preferences. The described cyber-security system may help a user avoid interacting with vendors having privacy policies that don’t match the user’s preferences, and may help the user find other vendors whose privacy policies more closely match their privacy preferences.

“Of course, the methods and systems of the above-referenced embodiments may also include other additional elements, steps, computer-executable instructions, or computer-readable data structures. In this regard, other embodiments are disclosed and claimed herein as well. The details of these and other embodiments of the present invention are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the description, drawings, and claims.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. An apparatus, comprising: one or more processors; a memory unit storing computer-executable instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the apparatus to: display a logon button that includes a login request to perform a transaction between a user and a requesting site; receive the login request to perform the transaction between the user and the requesting site, the login request comprising a token request; verify an identity of the user of the transaction; generate a token based on the received login request; determine whether the requesting site is a trusted site; based on a two-way verification of a trusted site determination and the identity verification of the user, transmit the generated token to the requesting site; compare a privacy preference of the user and a privacy policy of the requesting site; based on a determination that the privacy policy is not compatible with the privacy preference of the user, determine one or more alternative sites for completing the transaction; and transmit a response indicating the one or more alternative sites.

“2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the computer-executable instructions, when executed by the processor, further cause the apparatus to: after sending the response indicating the one or more alternative sites for completing the transaction, receive a second request comprising an alternative login request to perform the transaction between the user and an alternative requesting site.

“3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the computer-executable instructions, when executed by the processor, further cause the apparatus to: verify the identity of the user of an alternative transaction; generate an alternative token based on the received alternative login request; determine if the alternative requesting site is an alternative trusted site; and based on a trusted alternative site determination and the identity verification of the user of the alternative transaction, transmit the generated alternative token to the alternative requesting site.

“4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the computer-executable instructions, when executed by the processor, cause the apparatus to determine the one or more alternative sites for completing the transaction, by causing the apparatus to: retrieve, from storage, indications of the one or more alternative sites, wherein the storage includes an association between the privacy preference of the user and the one or more alternative sites.

“5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the response comprises, for each of the one or more alternative sites, an indication of a relative compatibility of a corresponding privacy policy with the privacy preference.

“6. The apparatus of claim 5, wherein the indication of the relative compatibility comprises an indication associated with each of a plurality of privacy categories.

“7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the plurality of privacy categories comprises a data collected category, a data sharing category, an opt in/out category, and a data deletion category.

“8. A method comprising: displaying a logon button that includes a login request to perform a transaction between a user and a requesting site; receiving the login request to perform the transaction between the user and the requesting site, the login request comprising a token request; verifying an identity of the user of the transaction; generating a token based on the received login request; determining if the requesting site is a trusted site; based on a two-way verification of a trusted site determination and the identity verification of the user, transmitting the generated token to the requesting site; comparing a privacy preference of the user and a privacy policy of the requesting site; based on a determination that the privacy policy is not compatible with the privacy preference of the user, determining one or more alternative sites for completing the transaction; and transmitting a response indicating the one or more alternative sites.

“9. The method of claim 8, further comprising: after sending the response indicating the one or more alternative sites for completing the transaction, receiving a second request comprising an alternative login request to perform the transaction between the user and an alternative requesting site.

“10. The method of claim 9, further comprising: verifying the identity of the user of an alternative transaction; generating an alternative token based on the received alternative login request; determining if the alternative requesting site is an alternative trusted site; and based on a trusted alternative site determination and the identity verification of the user of the alternative transaction, transmitting the generated alternative token to the alternative requesting site.

“11. The method of claim 8, further comprising: retrieving, from storage, indications of the one or more alternative sites, wherein the storage includes an association between the privacy preference of the user and the one or more alternative sites.

“12. The method of claim 11, wherein the response comprises, for each of the one or more alternative sites, an indication of a relative compatibility of a corresponding privacy policy with the privacy preference.

“13. The method of claim 12, wherein the indication of the relative compatibility comprises an indication associated with each of a plurality of privacy categories.

“14. The method of claim 13, wherein the plurality of privacy categories comprises a data collected category, a data sharing category, an opt in/out category, and a data deletion category.

“15. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: display a logon button that includes a login request to perform a transaction between a user and a requesting site; receive the login request to perform the transaction between the user and the requesting site, the login request comprising a token request; verify an identity of the user of the transaction; generate a token based on the received login request; determine if the requesting site is a trusted site; and based on a two-way verification of a trusted site determination and the identity verification of the user, transmit the generated token to the requesting site; compare a privacy preference of the user and a privacy policy of the requesting site; based on a determination that the privacy policy is not compatible with the privacy preference of the user, determine one or more alternative sites for completing the transaction; and transmit a response indicating the one or more alternative sites.

“16. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 15, storing further instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to determine the one or more alternative entities for providing the content, by causing the one or more processors to: after sending the response indicating the one or more alternative sites for completing the transaction, receive a second request comprising an alternative login request to perform the transaction between the user and an alternative requesting site.

“17. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 16, storing further instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: verify the identity of the user of an alternative transaction; generate an alternative token based on the received alternative login request; determine if the alternative requesting site is an alternative trusted site; and based on a trusted alternative site determination and the identity verification of the user of the alternative transaction, transmit the generated alternative token to the alternative requesting site.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: De Guia, Nicolette. Safe logon. U.S. Patent Number 11196734, filed July 23, 2019, and published online on December 7, 2021. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11196734.PN.&OS=PN/11196734RS=PN/11196734

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