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> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. Th

> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.

bananapub 3y ago
I mean, in a broader sense it isn't a bug. the government outsourced it to Capita explicitly so there's a responsibility gap into which people can fall and lose their money. it's not like these services suck and are hostile to normal people by accident - if the Powers That Be wanted it to not suck then they wouldn't structure systems like this.
- sorokod 3y ago
  There is no gap, or rather it is artificial and created on purpose. The government is accountable (not responsible, there is a difference) for the entire process to work without any gaps.
zimpenfish 3y ago
To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...
- pydry 3y ago
  To be equally fair, "Crapita" (as private eye calls them) is an incompetent joke that scores government contracts through corruption and then pays the bare minimum (below minimum wage in one case) to the providers of its services. There are lots of examples like the one a above.
  - flir 3y ago
    > as private eye calls them ...and their customers... suppliers... partners... employees...
    - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
      Crapita costs the UK far, far, far, far more than "dead" pensioner fraud does.
- wslh 3y ago
  To be more fair: it is easy to check if they are alive or not. This is not rocket science.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    In these times, it is only easy in-person.
    - mvc 3y ago
      Even in these times, once you've done the work to disprove the alleged link, it should be easy to log that fact.
    - smeej 3y ago
      Even so, a pension system for UK schoolteachers probably does have the bandwidth to get an in-person identity check done.
  - otikik 3y ago
    So is to add an extra field “different deceased person with same name”
  - gruez 3y ago
    How is it easy? How do you make sure the old person in front of you is really the pensioner and not her 80 year old daughter?
    - wslh 3y ago
      Sorry, but we have not doing this for centuries if not milleniums for trillion of people before us?
      - lazide 3y ago
        We haven’t at this scale, no. For most of human existence, you would already know if Bob or Jane was dead, since you’d have gone to their funeral or knew someone who had.
- cracadumi 3y ago
  Reminds me of Sogen Kato's story : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogen_Kato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogen_Kato
  - itronitron 3y ago
    hmm, I wonder how long it will be until someone makes a 'pensioner-bot' that passes for a deceased relative.
- bachmeier 3y ago
  To be fair? That's like saying "To be fair, some people try to steal money from banks, so it's okay if the ATM sometimes doesn't work."
  - ajross 3y ago
    More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.
    - logifail 3y ago
      > Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form. From the original article: "According to the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees Teachers’ Pensions, death register entries may be matched to scheme members even if personal details differ. The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link." The problem is with the approach in attempting to reduce fraud. Once a false positive from an incomplete match from the death register is proven false - when the pension recipient tells you they are still alive - you don't need to check up on that same incomplete match every 12 months, because you already know it's false. Demanding "a solution of some form" completely misunderstands the problem and is the same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal.
      - ajross 3y ago
        > same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal. I don't follow? This is just a data quality problem. Should it be fixed? Obviously. But everyone deals with bad data. You can't fix that, you just optimize around it. The Post Office scandal was emphatically NOT about a data quality problem. It was that they were criminally prosecuting people to cover up their data quality problem. Again, everyone has bad data.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  I think had relatives in Poland in the 1980s who were collecting social security for a dead person. The U.S. has a database of social security numbers of the deceased which is quite interesting for a few reasons. It is closely guarded because social security numbers are assigned sequentially by geographic region so if you know someone’s SSN you can get their date of birth or vice versa. If you manage to get in that database you are really in trouble because every financial institution has a copy of that list and there is no procedure to get you off. It is quite literally a “financial death sentence.”
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    Closely guarded? It’s not available to the public. There’s probably a few million people who can access the death register in some capacity. SSNs aren’t secure credentials without validation, period.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    > because social security numbers are assigned sequentially by geographic region so if you know someone’s SSN you can get their date of birth or vice versa. This has been false for decades. (early '90s, I think?)
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      If it stopped being true in 1990, then it remains true for anybody over the age of 34, which is not exactly a small chunk of the population. (Though yes it's a good thing they stopped doing sequential numbers) Edit: https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomizationfaqs.html https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomizationfaqs.html seems to say that the change was only implemented in 2011, which would mean that even more of the population is unaffected.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        My sisters were born after 1990, and they have random ssn's ... especially compared to my brother and I who were born before 1990 (we were all born in the same city). I think the scheme implemented in 2011 is a more random one than the previous scheme or maybe it wasn't implemented everywhere before 2011, and took 20 years to implement (which is also believable).
- SkeuomorphicBee 3y ago
  That is throwing the baby out with the bath water. The amount of fraud doesn't justify creating such burden on users. The problem is there is a market failure in the form of misaligned interests (the provider's best interest is to make the process as difficult as possible, not only to curb fraud, but also to avoid paying actual customers). This can only be fixed with government oversight and steep fines (so steep that they are more expensive than doing right by their customers).
  - frutiger 3y ago
    > The problem is there is a market failure in the form of misaligned interests Misaligned interests don’t create market failures. Usually imperfect information or costs/benefits borne by third parties do.
  - zimpenfish 3y ago
    > This can only be fixed with government oversight It's a system contracted out from UKGOV being administered on behalf of UKGOV. If government oversight worked, it would have worked already, surely?
- dazc 3y ago
  Reminded of the story where a dead body was taken to a post office in Ireland in an attempt to withdraw pension money... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60091753 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60091753
- Simon_ORourke 3y ago
  True, and colloquially much of the longevity attributed to countries like Japan may have some basis in this type of fraud. However, every bill comes due eventually and you typically need to present a death certificate in most countries or answer one of these proof of life surveys.
15457345234 3y ago
> administered by Capita if you know
- philjohn 3y ago
  Oh, I know. This is the same Capita pensions who recently suffered a data breach. I worked for a company who was acquired by them and, well, as you said, if you know, you know.
lloydatkinson 3y ago
This is par for the course with Crapita
cushpush 3y ago
>repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead. Mortifying
batch12 3y ago
Death comes for us all. Maybe they should come up with a way to confirm this for all of their beneficiaries.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bananapub 3y ago

I mean, in a broader sense it isn't a bug. the government outsourced it to Capita explicitly so there's a responsibility gap into which people can fall and lose their money. it's not like these services suck and are hostile to normal people by accident - if the Powers That Be wanted it to not suck then they wouldn't structure systems like this.

sorokod 3y ago
There is no gap, or rather it is artificial and created on purpose. The government is accountable (not responsible, there is a difference) for the entire process to work without any gaps.

zimpenfish 3y ago

To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...

pydry 3y ago
To be equally fair, "Crapita" (as private eye calls them) is an incompetent joke that scores government contracts through corruption and then pays the bare minimum (below minimum wage in one case) to the providers of its services. There are lots of examples like the one a above.
- flir 3y ago
  > as private eye calls them ...and their customers... suppliers... partners... employees...
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    Crapita costs the UK far, far, far, far more than "dead" pensioner fraud does.
wslh 3y ago
To be more fair: it is easy to check if they are alive or not. This is not rocket science.
- userbinator 3y ago
  In these times, it is only easy in-person.
  - mvc 3y ago
    Even in these times, once you've done the work to disprove the alleged link, it should be easy to log that fact.
  - smeej 3y ago
    Even so, a pension system for UK schoolteachers probably does have the bandwidth to get an in-person identity check done.
- otikik 3y ago
  So is to add an extra field “different deceased person with same name”
- gruez 3y ago
  How is it easy? How do you make sure the old person in front of you is really the pensioner and not her 80 year old daughter?
  - wslh 3y ago
    Sorry, but we have not doing this for centuries if not milleniums for trillion of people before us?
    - lazide 3y ago
      We haven’t at this scale, no. For most of human existence, you would already know if Bob or Jane was dead, since you’d have gone to their funeral or knew someone who had.
cracadumi 3y ago
Reminds me of Sogen Kato's story : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogen_Kato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogen_Kato
- itronitron 3y ago
  hmm, I wonder how long it will be until someone makes a 'pensioner-bot' that passes for a deceased relative.
bachmeier 3y ago
To be fair? That's like saying "To be fair, some people try to steal money from banks, so it's okay if the ATM sometimes doesn't work."
- ajross 3y ago
  More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.
  - logifail 3y ago
    > Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form. From the original article: "According to the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees Teachers’ Pensions, death register entries may be matched to scheme members even if personal details differ. The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link." The problem is with the approach in attempting to reduce fraud. Once a false positive from an incomplete match from the death register is proven false - when the pension recipient tells you they are still alive - you don't need to check up on that same incomplete match every 12 months, because you already know it's false. Demanding "a solution of some form" completely misunderstands the problem and is the same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal.
    - ajross 3y ago
      > same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal. I don't follow? This is just a data quality problem. Should it be fixed? Obviously. But everyone deals with bad data. You can't fix that, you just optimize around it. The Post Office scandal was emphatically NOT about a data quality problem. It was that they were criminally prosecuting people to cover up their data quality problem. Again, everyone has bad data.
PaulHoule 3y ago
I think had relatives in Poland in the 1980s who were collecting social security for a dead person. The U.S. has a database of social security numbers of the deceased which is quite interesting for a few reasons. It is closely guarded because social security numbers are assigned sequentially by geographic region so if you know someone’s SSN you can get their date of birth or vice versa. If you manage to get in that database you are really in trouble because every financial institution has a copy of that list and there is no procedure to get you off. It is quite literally a “financial death sentence.”
- Spooky23 3y ago
  Closely guarded? It’s not available to the public. There’s probably a few million people who can access the death register in some capacity. SSNs aren’t secure credentials without validation, period.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  > because social security numbers are assigned sequentially by geographic region so if you know someone’s SSN you can get their date of birth or vice versa. This has been false for decades. (early '90s, I think?)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    If it stopped being true in 1990, then it remains true for anybody over the age of 34, which is not exactly a small chunk of the population. (Though yes it's a good thing they stopped doing sequential numbers) Edit: https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomizationfaqs.html https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomizationfaqs.html seems to say that the change was only implemented in 2011, which would mean that even more of the population is unaffected.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      My sisters were born after 1990, and they have random ssn's ... especially compared to my brother and I who were born before 1990 (we were all born in the same city). I think the scheme implemented in 2011 is a more random one than the previous scheme or maybe it wasn't implemented everywhere before 2011, and took 20 years to implement (which is also believable).
SkeuomorphicBee 3y ago
That is throwing the baby out with the bath water. The amount of fraud doesn't justify creating such burden on users. The problem is there is a market failure in the form of misaligned interests (the provider's best interest is to make the process as difficult as possible, not only to curb fraud, but also to avoid paying actual customers). This can only be fixed with government oversight and steep fines (so steep that they are more expensive than doing right by their customers).
- frutiger 3y ago
  > The problem is there is a market failure in the form of misaligned interests Misaligned interests don’t create market failures. Usually imperfect information or costs/benefits borne by third parties do.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > This can only be fixed with government oversight It's a system contracted out from UKGOV being administered on behalf of UKGOV. If government oversight worked, it would have worked already, surely?
dazc 3y ago
Reminded of the story where a dead body was taken to a post office in Ireland in an attempt to withdraw pension money... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60091753 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60091753
Simon_ORourke 3y ago
True, and colloquially much of the longevity attributed to countries like Japan may have some basis in this type of fraud. However, every bill comes due eventually and you typically need to present a death certificate in most countries or answer one of these proof of life surveys.

15457345234 3y ago

> administered by Capita if you know

philjohn 3y ago
Oh, I know. This is the same Capita pensions who recently suffered a data breach. I worked for a company who was acquired by them and, well, as you said, if you know, you know.

lloydatkinson 3y ago

This is par for the course with Crapita

cushpush 3y ago

>repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead. Mortifying

batch12 3y ago

Death comes for us all. Maybe they should come up with a way to confirm this for all of their beneficiaries.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]