How Often Does ID Theft Target Deceased Consumers?

ID Theft on Deceased Averages 2,000 per Day

The end of April 2012, ID Analytics, a company that specializes in consumer identity behavior, released the results of a study they conducted of deceased individuals’ identity. The study was conducted from January through March 2011 and compared the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers on 100 million credit applications against data in the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File.

Fraud on the deceased using real and made up Social Security Numbers
They found that 800,000 deceased Americans’ identities were intentionally used for identity theft purposes. This equates to over 2,000 per day! In addition, another 1.6 million Social Security numbers that thieves made up, actually belonged to deceased individuals. The two situations together totaled approximately 2.4 million annually.

Just because the individual is deceased, doesn’t stop claims by debtors against the deceased’s estate. Family members have to prove that the debt incurred after the individual died, by providing a copy of the death certificate.

According to Stephen Coggeshall, ID Analytics chief technology officer, “it is important for people to monitor not only their own identities, but also those of their deceased family members for at least one year after the death.”

Tips to avoid fraud

The following tips are recommended by ID Analytics to keep fraudsters from duping the dead:

Provide only limited personal information in the deceased’s obituary, and avoid printing the individual’s complete date of birth or address.

Promptly notify the Social Security Administration of a loved one’s death at 800-772-1213.

Cancel the deceased’s driver’s license with the state’s motor vehicles department.

Notify all entities with which the deceased had a financial relationship — including banks, credit card companies and brokerage firms — about his or her death.

Notify all three credit reporting bureaus of the death — Equifax, TransUnion and Experian — and mail them copies of the death certificate.

Credit Expert Witness, John Ulzheimer, is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit.com, the credit blogger for Mint.com, and a Contributor for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  He is an expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit.com, John is the only recognized credit expert who actually comes from the credit industry.  Follow him on Twitter here.

Categorised in: Credit Cards, Credit Monitoring, Credit Report, Credit Score, Getting Credit, Identity Theft, Money & Identity

This post was written by John Ulzheimer