International Business Machines Corporation

William Lucy

John Anthony Feller

Hank Ibell

Christopher Meyer

Joseph Marrero Corchado

A method for monitoring a physical area for unauthorized access by a user of a wireless device, includes scanning for signals from a wireless device, detecting a wireless signal from a wireless device, determining a wireless device ID associated with the wireless signal, determining whether the wireless device ID matches a wireless ID in an authorized or unauthorized ID list and in response to determining that the wireless device ID matches a wireless ID in the unauthorized wireless ID list, activate a security alert. The method may further include in response to determining, that the wireless device ID does not match a wireless ID in the authorized wireless ID list nor the unauthorized wireless ID list, receiving, signal strength information associated with the detected wireless signal for a predetermined time interval and determining a pattern as a function of time of the received signal strength.

Detecting unauthorized physical access via wireless electronic device identifiers

Approaches presented herein enable obscuring a query from an external web service provider. More specifically, a user-submitted query is split into at least two non-identical, secondary search queries. The non-identical search queries are submitted to an external web services provider separately, at different times spread throughout a search timeframe, from different virtual locations, thereby obscuring the original search query from the external web services provider. An internal system receives and merges the search results of the non-identical secondary queries from the external web services provider. The internal system then performs a second search on the merged results using the original user-submitted search query to find the results within the merged results that are most relevant to the original query. These relevant results are then presented to the user.

Obscuring internet searches from external web service providers

Monitoring a physical area for detection of a wireless device includes scanning for signals from a wireless device within a scanning range defining the physical area, detecting a wireless signal from a wireless device within the scanning range, determining a wireless device ID associated with the wireless device detected within the scanning range and determining whether the wireless device ID is unknown. In response to determining that the wireless device ID is unknown, analyzing the wireless signal to determine scan data representative of the wireless signal, monitoring the scan data over time, determining a scan data pattern as a function of time based on the monitored scan data, comparing the scan data pattern to scan data patterns stored in a database and in response to determining that the scan data pattern based on the monitored scan data matches a scan data pattern in the database, activate a first alert.

Monitoring a physical area for unauthorized access by a user of a wireless device includes setting a wireless signal scanning range using at least one wireless scanning device, detecting a wireless signal within the scanning range, determining a status of the wireless device of authorized, unauthorized or unknown, monitoring scan data obtained from the scanning device during the time the wireless signal remains within the scanning range. A scan data pattern based on the monitored scan data is determined and compared to a scan data pattern database containing scan data patterns indicative of suspicious behavior and determining whether the monitored scan data pattern matches a suspicious scan data pattern based on the comparison. The system identifies the wireless device as unauthorized in response to a match with a suspicious scan data pattern and activates a security alert.

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Durham, NC, United States of America

William Lucy