Square, Inc.

Collin Mulliner

Oliver S C Quigley

In various situations, it may be desirable to know the location of a device requesting services, and to confirm that the device is at an actual location that coincides with the purported location of the device. In order to verify that a device is actually at its purported location, the device may be instructed to perform DNS (domain name system) lookups to resolve a set of given network domain names and to thereby find network addresses that are associated with the domain names Geolocation databases are then consulted to determine the locations of the hosts associated with the network addresses. These locations are checked for consistency with the purported location of the device, and services may be denied if inconsistencies are found.

DNS-based device geolocation

In some examples, methods and systems may process one or more payment transactions between a merchant and a buyer by registering a communication device as an authorization instrument to the payment transaction. To this end, the method includes detecting at least one transaction activity associated with a payment system, establishing a communication channel between the POS terminal an RF communication device in proximity to the POS terminal. Then obtaining at least one device characteristic of the communication device, wherein the device characteristic is related to the operational or physical features of the communication device; generating a digital fingerprint based in part on the obtained device characteristic and the information related to received payment object; determining whether the digital fingerprint substantially compares to an existing fingerprint in a database and if the existing fingerprint is substantially similar to the digital fingerprint, authorizing the payment transaction through presence of the communication device.

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Brooklyn, NY, United States of America

Collin Mulliner