. One method for detecting fraud is to check for suspicious changes in user behavior. This paper describes the automatic design of user profiling methods for the purpose of fraud detection, using a series of data mining techniques. Specifically, we use a rule-learning program to uncover indicators of fraudulent behavior from a large database of customer transactions. Then the indicators are used to create a set of monitors, which profile legitimate customer behavior and indicate anomalies. Finally, the outputs of the monitors are used as features in a system that learns to combine evidence to generate high-confidence alarms. The system has been applied to the problem of detecting cellular cloning fraud based on a database of call records. Experiments indicate that this automatic approach performs better than hand-crafted methods for detecting fraud. Furthermore, this approach can adapt to the changing conditions typical of fraud detection environments. Keywords: fraud detection, rule l...

Abstract. One method for detecting fraud is to check for suspicious changes in user behavior. This paper describes the automatic design of user profiling methods for the purpose of fraud detection, using a series of data mining techniques. Specifically, we use a rule-learning program to uncover indicators of fraudulent behavior from a large database of customer transactions. Then the indicators are used to create a set of monitors, which profile legitimate customer behavior and indicate anomalies. Finally, the outputs of the monitors are used as features in a system that learns to combine evidence to generate high-confidence alarms. The system has been applied to the problem of detecting cellular cloning fraud based on a database of call records. Experiments indicate that this automatic approach performs better than hand-crafted methods for detecting fraud. Furthermore, this approach can adapt to the changing conditions typical of fraud detection environments.

This paper describes the automatic design of methods for detecting fraudulent behavior. Much of the design is accomplished using a series of machine learning methods. In particular, we combine data mining and constructive induction with more standard machine learning techniques to design methods for detecting fraudulent usage of cellular telephones based on profiling customer behavior. Specifically, we use a rulelearning program to uncover indicators of fraudulent behavior from a large database of cellular calls. These indicators are used to create profilers, which then serve as features to a system that combines evidence from multiple profilers to generate high-confidence alarms. Experiments indicate that this automatic approach performs nearly as well as the best hand-tuned methods for detecting fraud. Introduction In the United States, cellular fraud costs the telecommunications industry hundreds of millions of dollars per year (Walters & Wilkinson 1994). A specific kind of cellul...