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Surprised that personal info such as Kevin’s SSN wasn’t removed prior to release.
by Helithumper 2y ago
Surprised that personal info such as Kevin’s SSN wasn’t removed prior to release.
- joering2 2y agoSteve's Job SSN is 549-94-3295. How can this release harm a dead person?
- spydum 2y agoDidn't you read Elon's post? SSNs database isn't deduplicated!
- cyberax 2y agoThat's because there are SSNs shared by multiple people.
- tormeh 2y agoWhat? That sounds less than ideal.
- caspper69 2y agoIt usually wasn't intentional: https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/misused.html https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/misused.html The system still has to disambiguate and support the prospect of it happening though.
- blindriver 2y agohttps://www.credit.com/blog/the-most-misused-social-security-number-100564/ https://www.credit.com/blog/the-most-misused-social-security...
- jfengel 2y agoHim, probably not. His estate, however, potentially. Perhaps one could get a loan, using his SSN, and his estate gets the bill and subsequent harassment. SSNs make terrible secrets and it's insane that you could harm a live person by knowing their SSN. I doubt that insanity stops just because you're dead.
- klodolph 2y ago> I doubt that insanity stops just because you're dead. It really does stop. What can you do with someone’s SSN? Get loans, open bank accounts, receive government benefits, set up utilities, etc. It harms someone because creditors falsely believe that the SSN’s holder owes the debt, or the government believes that the SSN’s holder received benefits, etc. People who are falsely reported as dead have a difficult time doing anything… certainly a hard time getting loans. It’s certainly going to be hard to make a claim against an estate that’s been closed for a couple years, with a debt that is dated after that person’s death.
- sidewndr46 2y agoIt's worse if you share a name and birth date with someone, doubly worse if they die before you. In general, identity verification is a joke in the US. At best its a racket.
- colechristensen 2y agoIf someone is asking for an SSN they’ll be doing a credit report which will show if you’ve died.
- kmoser 2y agoWell, it might show if you've been reported to have died. It's possible you were reported as dead but you're still alive. It's possible you weren't reported dead but are. And it's also possible that regardless of how you were reported, the credit agency will botch the lookup and report your dead-or-alive status wrong. Given the amount of erroneous information in credit files, I wouldn't be surprised if the above scenarios happen regularly.
- dgacmu 2y agoEstates are issued their own, fresh TIN (taxpayer id). Once established they don't operate under the SSN of the deceased.
- gosub100 2y ago
- dgacmu 2y agoEr, what risk does the release of an SSN pose to someone two years deceased?
- hinkley 2y agoTIL. Now I’m wondering how many other people in this thread don’t know he died (pancreatic cancer). 59 isn’t that old. And he was expecting a baby at the time, which suggests maybe they didnt think so either.
- themaninthedark 2y agoLooking at the post made after he passed, not many people were aware he was sick. Pancreatic cancer is a fast and deadly one.
- silisili 2y agoThanks. I had no idea he'd passed, either.
- metadat 2y agoHere's to hoping for some early detection tech: Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43035147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43035147 - Yesterday (233 comments)
- cap11235 2y agoOn top of that, he'd be super popular as a target for anything because tons of folks, including non-technical, know the name "Mitnick" very well.
- klodolph 2y agoOther people have mentioned this… but it’s been established in policy that the SSN of a deceased person is not PII. There are a ton of different ways to get the SSN of someone who is deceased.
- userbinator 2y agoIf anything, having it public could dissuade others from trying to use it.
- wildzzz 2y agoThey aren't "public" but if you have a good reason, the govt will let you see the list of dead people SSNs. It's one of the first things checked when you're trying to open a line of credit because it's so easy to verify.
- dylan604 2y agoBut they clearly left the year visible so blocking out the AUSA's name seems dumb too as it wouldn't be hard to look up who were the AUSAs to narrow down who was named in the file. The entire redacting seems just so superficial