| abstract |
This apparatus operates to discern temporal and spatial anomalies in the use of subscriber numbers in the cellular mobile telephone system. The detection of such anomalies is typically indicative of attempted fraudulent access to the cellular mobile telephone system via cloning of valid subscriber numbers. The detection of a bogus subscriber unit is accomplished by recording the call origination and termination patterns associated with the subscriber number. The cloning detection apparatus makes use of call origination data to identify concurrent call originations or receptions for a single subscriber number. However, such events represent only a small portion of the fraudulent calls and a more extensive analysis is typically required to identify subscriber number cloning. This further analysis includes a spatial analysis of successive call activity for a subscriber number. If two successive calls for a particular subscriber number are detected in a time interval that is too short to justify the geographic separation of the subscriber unit for the two successive calls, then this apparatus identifies these two call connections as including one subscriber unit having a cloned subscriber number. |