Blogger Exonerates SSDI

Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level reports on a case where someone used the SSDI to steal identities.

Tracy June Kirkland, 42, allegedly used Rootsweb.com to find the names, Social Security numbers and dates-of-birth of people who, shall we say, had no further need for their consumer credit lines. She then "would randomly call various credit card companies to determine if the deceased individual had an … account," according to the 15-count indictment (.pdf) filed in federal court in Los Angeles Tuesday.

She'd then persuade the issuer to change the mailing address for the dead victim to one of her many rented mail drops in Orange and Riverside counties, and in some cases she'd add her own name as an authorized user of the card, prosecutors say.

At least 100 of the dearly departed were allegedly used in the scheme, which prosecutors say began in October, 2005 and continued until last month.

Poulsen went to the trouble of actually asking folks at the SSA and Rootsweb how the SSDI works—unlike the MSM journalists I wrote about here, here, and here. He found that the fault in the Kirkland case lies not with the SSDI itself, but with the lenders who didn't use it correctly. In the words of Rootsweb spokesman Mike Ward, "The reason the Social Security Administration has it out there is to prevent fraud, and when it's used to perpetrate fraud it's because not all the checks and balances were in place on the financial institution's end."

Farm Livin' Is the Life for Me

I've blogged before about the longevity studies of Drs. Leonid and Natalia Gavrilova. Their latest conclusions were drawn from World War I Draft Registration Cards.

In their study, Gavrilov and Gavrilova first used Social Security data to locate 240 men born in 1887 who lived to be at least 100.

In 171 of those cases, the men's physical and social attributes at age 30 were recorded on their WW I draft cards -- giving the researchers a snapshot of their lives at the time.

The Chicago team then compared that data against draft card information for a randomly selected group of American men who were also born in 1887 but who did not reach 100. [Link]

They concluded that trim farmers with more than three children were more likely to live to see 100 than overweight city boys without kids. In fact, living on a farm "more than doubled a man's odds of living into the triple digits."

SSN Nonsense

Here's another journalist who believes that the SSDI could be useful to identity thieves.

I was doing a little genealogical research and found my father’s Social Security number in three seconds on Google. (SSNs of dead people are most coveted by thieves.) So one must say the horses already are out of the pasture. These security rules create a false sense of security where there is none. [Link]

If the writer is referring to the SSDI, those dead horses are very much still in the pasture. As I've noted before, the SSDI (or "Death Master File") is used to prevent identity theft by letting financial institutions know which SSNs are no longer in service. Valid SSNs are distributed to thieves by an entirely different government agency.

The SSDI Sometimes Lies

Despite being listed in the Social Security Death Index, David Rotolo insists that he's still alive. (Update: As of May 2007, he's no longer listed.) The SSA blames the mixup on the VA.

Veterans Affairs spokesman Ryan Steinbach said his agency had, in fact, marked Rotolo as dead in February 2005. It listed his date of death as Sept. 7, 2002.

He said the VA has no doubt Rotolo is who he claims to be and that he is alive.

"We're very sure that's the guy," Steinbach said. "We're very sorry for the time we did have him deceased and any problems it may have caused him or his family."

Steinbach said he hoped the error didn't cause Rotolo "any undue pain or harm."

"We can say this," Steinbach said. "He now has something in common with both Mark Twain and Paul McCartney." [Link]

Outliers or Out-and-Out Liars?

James dropped a post at GenForum pointing out that some people were issued Social Security cards long before the program was even a twinkle in FDR's eye.

If you go to the [RootsWeb SSDI] web site and put in the death year of 1900 you will get 89 hits.

If you put in any death year from 1900 to 1935 and on to 1940, 1945 and into 1950's you will get hits. [Link]

You can also find birth dates going back to 1800 (the SSA's computerized system seems to have blocked input of births earlier than this, and deaths prior to 1900). The oldest person to ever receive benefits was Ann Feinseth, who cashed her final check in 2004 at the remarkable age of 195—old enough to be Ida May Fuller's great-grandmother.

You might mention this to anyone who thinks the SSDI is infallible.

They Smell a Pulitzer

The folks at 10News in San Diego are patting themselves on the back for blowing the whistle on the SSDI.

Obituary identity thieves [are] gleaning names of the dead from obituaries, and matching them up with Social Security numbers posted on the Internet, on privately run genealogy sites and on the site run by the Social Security Administration, the Master Death Index.

10News took concerns about identity theft to the Social Security Administration, asking them to consider taking the Master Death Index off its Web site. [Link]

Apparently they didn't read my previous post explaining why they are a bunch of sun-baked nitwits. Until I hear of a single case that proves me wrong, I'll continue to maintain that no one has ever used data from the SSDI to steal someone else's identity. It's dead people not listed in the index who are vulnerable to identity theft. Once they're listed, the credit companies know that their SSNs are not valid.

By the way, asking the SSA to take the index off their website was a bold move, but I doubt they'll comply. The SSDI isn't on their website.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

The Truth is So Boring

10News in San Diego reported yesterday on culprits stealing the identities of the recently departed.

Thieves cull private information from newspaper obituaries and from the Internet -- mainly genealogy sites that post the Social Security numbers of the deceased taken directly from the Social Security Administration's "master death index." [Link]

But don't worry—we won't be losing the SSDI anytime soon. In truth, the role of the index is exactly the opposite of what was reported: it prevents identity theft. Here's how an SSA commissioner explained it to Congress in 2002:

SSA receives reports of deaths from a number of sources, and from computer matches with death data from Federal and State agencies. This information is critical to the administration of our program and is made available to facilitate the prevention of identify theft of the SSN's of deceased persons. Many of the private sector companies purchasing this information are credit card companies and financial institutions. [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Death Database Released on DVD, Panned by Critics as 'Derivative'

From U.S. Newswire:

Social Security Administration's Death Master File Official Version Now Available on DVD

SPRINGFIELD, Va., Dec. 21 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Official Version of the Social Security Administration Death Master File is now available on DVD. The Death Master File is the complete and official SSA database of persons reported to SSA as being deceased. The new DVD version is available from the National Technical Information Service.

The SSA Death Master File is used by leading government, financial, investigative, credit reporting, medical research and other industries to verify identity as well as to prevent fraud and comply with the USA Patriot Act. The new DVD version delivers the complete database on one DVD disc, rather than 37 magnetic cartridges or 4 CD-ROM. The DVD will save backup storage space as well as save time uploading the file.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

To buy your own copy for only $6,900, visit the NTIS website. The DVD comes without a commentary track, and don't expect to find any Easter Eggs.

Are First-Born Scorpio Cowgirls Immortal?

Leonid A. Gavrilov and Natalia S. Gavrilova of the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center have been studying the longevity of American centenarians. To identify the 100-year-olds, they've been using the Internet.

[W]e extracted detailed family data for 991 alleged centenarians born in 1875-1899 in the United States from publicly available computerized genealogies of 75 million individuals identified in our previous study. . . . In order to validate the age of the centenarians, we linked these records to the Social Security Administration Death Master File records (for death date validation) and then to the records of the U.S. censuses for years 1900, 1910 and 1920 (for birth date validation). [Link (pdf)]

The researchers found that three unexpected factors may contribute to an extra-long life:

• Women and men who were the first born in large families were two to three times more likely to make it to 100 than later-born children.
• Those raised in the rural West had a better chance of reaching that age.
• People who were born in October and November had longer life expectancy than those born in April through June. [Link]

If you satisfy none of these criteria, you may want to start making final arrangements now.