Patent Issued for User Authentication Based On Telematics Information (USPTO 10,623,401)

2020 APR 28 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventor Yager, Floyd (Park Ridge, IL), filed on January 6, 2017, was published online on April 27, 2020, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 10,623,401 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: “Authentication refers to verifying an identity of an individual. One type of authentication procedure often employed involves authenticating individuals based on username and password combinations. Despite advice to the contrary, individuals often use the same or similar passwords for different user accounts. As a result, compromising one user account of an individual may compromise multiple user accounts. Therefore a need exists for improved authentication procedures.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventor’s 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. The summary is not an extensive overview of the invention. It is neither intended to identify key or critical elements of the disclosure nor to delineate the scope of the disclosure. The following summary merely presents some concepts of the disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the description below.

“Aspects of the present disclosure are directed to computerized systems, methods, devices, and apparatuses for a user authentication system based on telematics information. For example, the system may provide an access control process that uses collected telematics information for a vehicle of an individual to authenticate the identity of the individual or authorize the individual to access a computing resource, such as a secured device, application, account, or the like.

“The disclosure describes a system comprising a telematics device associated with a vehicle having one or more sensors arranged therein, a mobile device of a user associated with the vehicle, and a server computer comprising hardware including a processor and memory. The server computer may be configured to receive, from the one or more sensors and via the telematics device, telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle, store the telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle in the memory of the server computer, receive, from the mobile device, a request to authenticate the user to access a computing resource, generate one or more questions for authenticating the user based on the telematics data of the user, transmit, to the mobile device, the one or more questions for presentation to the user, receive, from the mobile device, one or more answers to the one or more questions, and transmit, to the mobile device, an indication of whether the user is authenticated based on the one or more answers.

“The disclosure also describes an apparatus comprising at least one processor, a network interface configured to communicate, via a network, with a telematics device and a first computing device, and a memory storing computer-readable instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to receive, from the telematics device, telematics data of a user associated with a vehicle, store the telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle in the memory, receive, from the first computing device, a request to authenticate the user to access a computing resource, generate one or more questions for authenticating the user based on the telematics data of the user, transmit, to the first computing device, the one or more questions for presentation to the user, receive, from the first computing device, one or more answers to the one or more questions, and transmit, to the first computing device, an indication of whether the user is authenticated based on the one or more answers.

“In addition, aspects of this disclosure provide a method that includes receiving, at a computing device and from a telematics device associated with a vehicle having one or more sensors arranged therein, telematics data of a user associated with the vehicle, storing, at a data store of the computing device, the telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle, receiving, at the computing device and from a mobile device of the user, a request to authenticate the user to access a computing resource, generating, by at least one processor of the computing device, one or more questions for authenticating the user based on the telematics data of the user, transmitting, to the mobile device, the one or more questions for presentation to the user, receiving, from the mobile device, one or more answers to the one or more questions, and transmitting, to the mobile device, an indication of whether the user is authenticated based on the one or more answers.

“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:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A system comprising: a telematics device associated with a vehicle having one or more sensors arranged therein; a mobile device of a user associated with the vehicle; and a server computer, comprising hardware including a processor and memory, the server computer configured to: receive, from the one or more sensors and via the telematics device, telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle, wherein the telematics data is collected over a first period of time; store the telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle in the memory of the server computer; receive, from the mobile device, a request to authenticate the user to access an application on the mobile device of the user; generate one or more questions for authenticating the user based on the telematics data of the user; receive, from the one or more sensors and via the telematics device, updated telematics data of the user collected over a second period of time, wherein the second period of time is after the first period of time; and modify the one or more questions for authenticating the user based on the updated telematics data of the user; transmit, to the mobile device, the modified one or more questions for presentation to the user; receive, from the mobile device, one or more answers to the modified one or more questions; and transmit, to the mobile device, an indication of whether the user is authenticated and permitted to access the application based on the one or more answers.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more sensors comprise at least one of an accelerometer, speedometer, gyroscope, and GPS, wherein the telematics data comprises real-time data that is collected by the one or more sensors while the user is driving the vehicle.

“3. The system of claim 2, wherein the real-time data comprises at least one of a driving speed, an acceleration measurement, a braking measurement, a steering measurement, a number of miles driven for a trip, a road condition rating, a trip time, or a trip duration, and wherein the real-time data is collected over a predetermined period of time.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the server computer is further configured to: parse the telematics data to identify location-related data, time-related data, and route-related data; determine one or more anomalies in at least one of the location-related data, time-related data, and route-related data; and generate the one or more questions for authenticating the user further based on the one or more anomalies.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the server computer is further configured to: generate the one or more questions for authenticating the user further based on insurance information of the user or vehicle information of the vehicle, wherein the user is an insurance policy holder, and wherein the vehicle is insured by an insurance company.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more questions for authenticating the user comprise one or more multiple-choice questions, and wherein the server computer is further configured to: generate a plurality of answer choices for each multiple-choice question based on analyzing the telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the server computer is further configured to: grant access to the application to the user responsive to determining that the user is authenticated.

“8. An apparatus comprising: at least one processor; a network interface configured to communicate, via a network, with a telematics device and a first computing device; and a memory storing computer-readable instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to: receive, from the telematics device, telematics data of a user associated with a vehicle; store the telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle in the memory; receive, from the first computing device, a request to authenticate the user to access an application on the first computing device; parse the telematics data to identify location-related data, time-related data, and route-related data; determine one or more anomalies in at least one of the location-related data, time-related data, and route-related data; generate one or more questions for authenticating the user based on the telematics data of the user and further based on the one or more anomalies; transmit, to the first computing device, the one or more questions for presentation to the user; receive, from the first computing device, one or more answers to the one or more questions; and transmit, to the first computing device, an indication of whether the user is authenticated and permitted to access the application based on the one or more answers.

“9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the first computing device comprises a mobile device of the user, and wherein the user is an insurance policy holder.

“10. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the telematics data comprises real-time data that is collected by one or more sensors arranged in the vehicle while the user is driving the vehicle, and wherein the real-time data comprises at least one of a driving speed, an acceleration measurement, a braking measurement, a steering measurement, a number of miles driven for a trip, a road condition rating, a trip time, or a trip duration, and wherein the real-time data is collected over a predetermined period of time.

“11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the apparatus to: receive, from the one or more sensors and via the telematics device, updated telematics data of the user collected over a second predetermined period of time, wherein the second predetermined period of time is after the predetermined period of time; and modify the one or more questions for authenticating the user based on the updated telematics data of the user.

“12. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the apparatus to: generate the one or more questions for authenticating the user further based on insurance information of the user or vehicle information of the vehicle, wherein the vehicle is insured by an insurance company.

“13. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the one or more questions for authenticating the user comprise one or more multiple-choice questions, and wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the apparatus to: generate a plurality of answer choices for each multiple-choice question based on analyzing the telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle.

“14. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the apparatus to: grant access to the application responsive to determining that the user is authenticated.

“15. A method comprising: receiving, at a computing device and from a telematics device associated with a vehicle having one or more sensors arranged therein, telematics data of a user associated with the vehicle; storing, at a data store of the computing device, the telematics data of the user associated with the vehicle; receiving, at the computing device and from a mobile device of the user, a request to authenticate the user to access an application on the mobile device of the user; parsing, by the at least one processor of the computing device, the telematics data to identify location-related data, time-related data, and route-related data; determining, by the at least one processor of the computing device, one or more anomalies in at least one of the location-related data, time-related data, and route-related data; generating, by at least one processor of the computing device, one or more questions for authenticating the user based on the telematics data of the user and further based on the one or more anomalies; transmitting, to the mobile device, the one or more questions for presentation to the user; receiving, from the mobile device, one or more answers to the one or more questions; and transmitting, to the mobile device, an indication of whether the user is authenticated and permitted to access the application based on the one or more answers.

“16. The method of claim 15, further comprising: generating, by the at least one processor of the computing device, the one or more questions for authenticating the user further based on insurance information of the user or vehicle information of the vehicle, wherein the user is an insurance policy holder, and wherein the vehicle is insured by an insurance company.

“17. The method of claim 15, further comprising: granting access to the application residing at the mobile device responsive to determining that the user is authenticated.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Yager, Floyd. User Authentication Based On Telematics Information. U.S. Patent Number 10,623,401, filed January 6, 2017, and published online on April 27, 2020. 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=10,623,401.PN.&OS=PN/10,623,401RS=PN/10,623,401

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