Patent attributes
Aspects described herein may provide techniques for authenticating a user using transaction-based authentication questions that are generated based on item-level purchase data. The item-level purchase data of a transaction may include specific details of a transaction such as identification of each item purchased and corresponding prices paid for each item. Transaction-based authentication questions for a financial account may be generated based on the item-level purchase data that an authorized user of the financial account is likely to remember and that a malicious actor is unlikely to correctly guess. As a result, the authorized user of the account is likely to be correctly authenticated while the malicious actor is likely to answer the transaction-based authentication question incorrectly. Authentication can therefore effectively block malicious actors without overly burdening actual authorized users during the authentication process.