Abstract: Stolen identity refund fraud is one of a number of types of Internet-centric crime (i.e., cybercrime) that includes the unauthorized use of a person's or business' identity information to file a tax return in order to illegally obtain a tax refund from, for example, a state or federal revenue service. Because fraudsters use legitimate identity information to create user accounts in tax return preparation systems, it can be difficult to detect stolen identity refund fraud activity. Methods and systems of the present disclosure identify and address potential fraud activity. The methods and systems analyze data entry characteristics of tax return content that is provided to a tax return preparation system to identify potential fraud activity and perform one or more risk reduction actions in response to identifying the potential fraud activity.

Abstract: Anti-phishing computing systems and methods. A first computer that hosts an online software application with which an end user or customer has an account generates an electronic message and independent confirmation data and transmits electronic message data and the confirmation data to a second computer, which updates an activity log for the end user's account such that the confirmation data is associated with the electronic message data in the activity log. The confirmation data may be a randomly generated number and incorporate an identifier of the online software application. The electronic message including the confirmation data is transmitted to the end user computing device such that using the activity log and multiple confirmation data transmissions to different computing systems can be used to confirm that a source of the electronic message was the online software application and that the electronic message is not a fraudulent phishing electronic message.

Abstract: Special data sources and algorithms are used to analyze tax return data in order to identify potential fraudulent activity before the tax return data is submitted in a tax return preparation system. Then, once the potential fraudulent activity is identified, an identity verification challenge is generated through the tax return preparation system requiring a response from the user of the account associated with the potential fraudulent activity before the tax return data is submitted. Consequently, analysis of tax related data is performed to identify potential fraudulent activity in a tax return preparation system before the tax return related data is submitted. Then, if potential fraud is detected, a user of the tax return preparation system is required to further prove their identity before the tax return data is submitted.