ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,554,812, issued on Feb. 17, was assigned to Stripe Inc. (South San Francisco, Calif.).

"Systems and methods for access authentication using prioritized personal information questions for data access and deletion in distributed service systems" was invented by Erik Barbara (South San Francisco, Calif.), Marc Doan (South San Francisco, Calif.), Lara Mossler (South San Francisco, Calif.) and David Sargent (South San Francisco, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method and apparatus for a distributed service provider system performing authentication for access to, and deletion of, user data, is described. The method may include monitori...