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Americans are getting older, but not this old: Social Security records show that 6.5 million people in the U.S. have reached the ripe old age of 112. In reality, only a few could possibly be alive. As of last fall, there were only 42 people known to be that old in the entire world.
But Social Security does not have death records for millions of these people, with the oldest born in 1869, according to a report by the agency's inspector general.
Only 13 of the people are still getting Social Security benefits, the report said. But for others, their Social Security numbers are still active, so a number could be used to report wages, open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, or claim fraudulent tax refunds.
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Social Security Data Says 6.5 Million People in US Reached Age 112
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A shapely CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRL is FIDGETING inside my costume..
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday March 17 2015, @02:43AM
$3b divided by 67,000 is about $47,000. Additionally, only 194 of them were used more than 50 times. A substantial portion of the reported wages on these SSNs may be due to entry errors rather than fraud. No one corrects you if you write your SSN incorrectly on a form or if the data entry person misreads your writing.
If every time you gave an employer or a financial institution your SSN, they sent it to the SSA to ask if that SSN went with the name and DOB, it would be a different story.
And of course the SSA has no incentive to purge these. Their duty is to administer SS benefits, not to administer an index of living citizens for credit checking purposes. I'm not sure the SSA's administrative budget is in any way linked to FICA receipts though.
These aren't the only SSNs not attached to living people that aren't in the death file. They're only the obvious ones. To the extent that other entities depend on an SSN that isn't in the death file being treated as valid, publishing this list may help them, but ultimately what do you want to trigger when someone uses one of these SSNs for something? SSNs haven't been centrally validated in the past and I'm not sure you can transition into a centrally validated system by publishing invalidated SSNs.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday March 17 2015, @03:23AM
Having employed more than a few people in my own business I can assure you an invalid SSN is indeed kicked back to the employer. It sometimes takes months. But it does come back. Happened twice to me. Two different guys. One turned out to be some guy on the lam. Too bad, because he was a cracker jack mechanic. The other turned out to be an illegal, Canadian, but we worked with him to get his green card and a valid SSN. A good programmer. Could have gotten a legal work visa just for the asking in those days.
Now if they are illegals, sharing a borrowed SSN, nobody says boo about that.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday March 17 2015, @10:29AM
I know that I see SSNs change a decent bit in data sets I work with based on wage reporting. Sometimes they change shortly after hire. Occasionally they change at retirement.
My suspicion would be that any validation done by the SSA and IRS is based on the master death file plus a patchwork of fraud red flag rules which is why it doesn't trigger immediately.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.