Digital Footprint

SEON's Digital Footprint solution provides insights into users' online presence through our Email and Phone APIs. These modules can be used independently for Digital Footprint analysis or as part of the Fraud API for scoring and rule evaluation.

• Email API – offers detailed insights into an email's digital presence, such as:
  • Email service provider and disposability status.
  • Profiles detected across 180+ online platforms.
  • Breach history and SEON consortium fraud history.
  • Proprietary network score for user risk assessment.
• Phone API – provides data on phone numbers, including:
  • Carrier information and disposability status.
  • Profiles detected on 30+ online platforms.
  • Consortium fraud history and proprietary network score.
• Both APIs utilize machine learning models trained on anonymized data from over 5,000 global customers to deliver precise and accurate risk assessments.

When to Use

• Use the Fraud API if:
  
  • You want to integrate Digital Footprint insights with other modules (e.g., IP API, Device Fingerprinting).
  • You need SEON's Scoring Engine for fraud detection and rule evaluation.

Integration

When integrating SEON into your workflows, you have to consider how long you can wait for a response from our system. While you can control some elements of this timeframe, others are down to external factors.

The following sections offer an overview of what timeouts are, how they work within SEON, and how they can affect the results you see. Make sure to monitor your results in the first few days and make any changes you feel are necessary to get the best results. You can also reach out to our team at any time, with any questions that you may have.

What are timeouts?

In an API-based service, timeouts define the total time available for a request to be processed and answered. Total time means the time it takes for your request to travel to our servers, to be processed and answered, and the time it takes for the response to travel back to your server.

In SEON, response time includes three major components:

• Network latency: The delay in communication over a network with our APIs.
• Data Enrichment: The time to get all values for Digital Footprint analysis. As SEON does not control third-party servers and data sources, response times may vary.
• Scoring Engine process: The time to process all rules and custom configurations in your account to create the full API response.

These three factors make up the total response time, otherwise known as the Integration timeout.

Note: All timeouts in SEON are measured in milliseconds (ms).

Setting up timeouts for SEON

When you run checks in SEON, our REST API requests data from the 200+ social sites we currently support. Each of these services has an optimal timeout range which ensures that we return accurate information to you.

As a result, the timeouts you set up for your SEON integration will affect the accuracy of the information you receive. Because every business and use case has unique data needs and varying risk appetites, we've made changing timeouts as easy as possible.

You can configure the timeout for Email and Phone API requests in your backend API implementation by setting the timeout parameter under config in the request body. This defines how long your system will wait for a response from SEON for that specific request.

In addition, you can also configure the Digital Footprint timeouts (for the Email and Phone APIs) on the SEON settings page, or through your API configuration.

Note: The API configuration will overwrite the timeframe set on the SEON settings page.

Keep in mind that the Email API / Phone API timeout setting only affects one of three components. As a result, it will not guarantee a response in a specific timeframe.

When configuring your timeouts, it’s best to add 500-1000 ms to the Digital Footprint timeout you’ve defined in SEON. This will allow your system to account for any network latency before dropping the request.

We highly recommend that all integrations be prepared to cope with client-side timeout errors. This is to ensure that transactions with no SEON response are not blocked in the event of unexpected errors or degraded API performance.

To ensure a stable user experience, we recommend that you accept transactions if your system does not receive a response within the timeout limit set. Transactions should only be blocked if the response received from SEON includes a state or score that indicates the transaction should be declined. For further information, please refer to our whitepaper on dealing with high scores and states.

Finetuning results with timeouts

Finetuning your timeout settings is an important part of getting the best results from SEON. Increasing timeouts will affect the accuracy of Digital Footprint analysis. Keep in mind that diminishing returns are at play. At lower values, a 100 ms increase can improve the hit rate by 10–20%. However, at higher levels, a 500 ms increase may only provide one extra checked service.

You can even set different timeouts for various use cases. For example, if you integrate SEON at multiple touchpoints you can run checks at registration, login, and at purchase. 

Increasing the timeout at high-risk interactions such as registration and purchase can offer you (and your customers) the best security. However, keeping it low at less risky touchpoints, such as login, can ensure a frictionless experience.

Email API v3 & Phone API v2

With the new API versions, we’ve streamlined data presentation by introducing aggregated categories. These categories consolidate multiple signals, simplifying risk assessment without the need to fine-tune individual signals or continuously update rules.

Timeout Recommendations: 

• 2500 ms: Lowest timeout for high-sensitivity use cases.
• 4000 ms: Best balance of performance and coverage.
• 5000+ ms: For maximum coverage with longer response times.

Note: The table below shows the cumulative number of checks available above each timeout threshold, with 95% accuracy. Checks available at lower timeouts are also included at higher ones. For example, under Email > Business > Technology, 23 checks are available at 2000 ms, increasing to 26 at 3000 ms, 28 at 4000 ms, and 32 at 5000 ms.

Email API v2 & Phone API v1 (legacy versions)

Tip: For a step-by-step guide on How to Adjust Digital Footprint Timeouts, visit our Knowledge Base.