We do business with a bank that provides bank products attached to tax returns (the somewhat slimy Return Anticipation Loans, and also things like auto-paying the CPA's fee out of the return, useful for low income folks, etc). Anyway, they have been fighting fraud, and over a business lunch a couple of months ago, the VP was talking about how they'd purchased a database and could now weed out applications that listed dead people as dependents, etc.
I told him that databases of decedant SSNs are readily available very inexpensively from genealogy sources, and he seemed surprised; they apparently spent a lot on this database and it isn't any more recent than genealogical sources (2000 I think). I don't know about accuracy, but everything I've ever looked up in the SSA death index has been accurate (small sample size of a hundred or so).
I think there's a hell of a lot of info in the genealogy realm, and I think you're right; the identity theft people probably know it all too well and the genealogy people sometimes release info without thought of bad uses. It's good to keep an eye on that stuff.
I told him that databases of decedant SSNs are readily available very inexpensively from genealogy sources, and he seemed surprised; they apparently spent a lot on this database and it isn't any more recent than genealogical sources (2000 I think). I don't know about accuracy, but everything I've ever looked up in the SSA death index has been accurate (small sample size of a hundred or so).
I think there's a hell of a lot of info in the genealogy realm, and I think you're right; the identity theft people probably know it all too well and the genealogy people sometimes release info without thought of bad uses. It's good to keep an eye on that stuff.
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