PhoneID from TeleSign is an online fraud prevention solution that helps online businesses automate fraud prevention and ensure protection against spam and other fraudulent activities.

Recently the company announced latest version of PhoneID solution for the United Kingdom and Germany. With the new PhoneID that includes data upgrade to these countries, companies can identify risky transactions by analyzing and reporting a set of key attributes associated with a phone number.

The key attributes include phone type, registration location information, and others. Under phone type, PhoneID identifies landline and mobile phones including pre and post paid data as well as VoIP numbers.

The intelligent authentication and fraud prevention solution can identify anonymous and location- independent telephone numbers which are mainly associated with such frauds, and it can quickly allow businesses to flag or block transactions from these phone types.

Anonymous phone types include VoIP phones and certain types of prepaid mobiles. They are difficult to trace. With PhoneID data upgrade for the U.K. and Germany, the company offers enhanced detection capabilities to each of these phone types.

 “The United Kingdom and Germany are just beginning to see the benefits of using PhoneID as a fraud prevention tool,” said Craig Whitney, vice president EMEA, in a statement. “We have access to global data assets which we convert to actionable intelligence for our customers.  This is a real turning point in fraud detection and prevention.”

Access to this global data will help identify fraud in many areas including financial services and e-commerce transactions, according to Whitney.

In one of the latest instances of VoIP fraud, two individuals, Vinod Tonangi and Harjeet Bhambhani, were accused of VoIP fraud to the tune of $4.4 million. U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan handed down a sentence of just over one year for Tonangi and just over three years for Bhamhhani. In addition, the two must serve three years of supervised release and Tonangi must pay $1.7 million in restitution.

TeleSign plans several upgrades to PhoneID in the coming quarters, which will result in even richer data sets, company officials said.

In another recent development  TeleSign announced partnership with Comodo, an Internet security provider, to offer joint layered security solution combining the strengths of digital certificates and out-of-band phone-based authentication.