Method for inferring behavioral characteristics based on a large volume of data

A method for inferring a behavioral characteristic of an entity from a large volume of multi-entity transaction data, comprising:

• extracting N ordered pairs from a telephone number database, the N ordered pairs having a telephone number and a business status value indicating whether the telephone number belongs to a business;
• storing transaction data including a plurality of call detail records, each of said records having an originating telephone number, a dialed telephone number, a connect time and a duration;
• extracting a first sequence of transactions corresponding to the N ordered pair telephone numbers from the transaction data;
• identifying a plurality of features indicative of the business status value within the first sequence of transactions;
• building a model to predict the business status value from the features;
• extracting a second sequence of transactions corresponding to a telephone number of an entity from the transaction data;
• predicting a business status value for the entity using the model and the second sequence of transactions;
• and
• inferring whether the entity is a business from the predicted business status value.