Abstract: A Counting Machine for Manufacturing and Validating Event-Relevant IDs, tagged with both Trust and Confidence Scores, for Specific Entities (Individuals and Enterprises) and their Prosoponyms using a Managed Secure-Immutable-Nonreputable-Replicated-Verifiable and Fault-Tolerant Distributed Datastore via an Ensemble-Based Network of both Existing and Newly-Created Heterogenous Single- and Multi-Factor ID Validation Services, the Ensemble consisting of both Commercial Organizations (known as Members) requiring valid Entity IDs for use during various events, such as purchase transactions, and Service Providers (known as Partners) who supply technology services for ID validation (as standalone services or as licensed by Members). The instant abstract is neither intended to define the invention disclosed in this specification nor intended to limit the scope of the invention in any way.

Abstract: The automated collection of online data is enhanced by generating and saving a context between a document and a related named entity, as well as a credibility level of the online source. The context, credibility level, and quality and quantity of collected data are used to enhance the use of the collected data in automated decision-making. Both the quality and the quantity may be continuously updated and honed through machine learning. Three new algorithms—DUPES, CORRAL, and ONTO—have been introduced to support the above, improving current state-of-the-art engineering practice by sharpening the strategy for named-entity searching, for ensuring that topic modeling produces relevant topic tags, and for handling sentiment which may be NEGATIVE, POSITIVE, and NEUTRAL (which includes MISSING and INCONCLUSIVE).