July 16, 2022 • 39 mins
It’s bad enough when the government knows you’re alive – there are taxes to pay, laws to be followed, all sorts of boring and unpleasant things. But each year, thousands of Americans find out life is far, far worse when the government thinks you are dead. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, they're friends. That's Josh. And for this week's Select,
I chose our episode that takes a frank and thrilling
look at what happens when the government thinks you're dead.
As you can imagine, nothing good is the answer to that.
I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
(00:20):
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck, Bryan,
there's Jerry over there. Jerry's not eating anything today. Chuk.
There is clear And did you just do that as
a coaster? Yes, I don't want to make a chinky
(00:43):
sound every time, Like Okay, I thought I don't want that.
I want this now, I get it. Did you hear that?
You didn't hear anything? No, I'm I said everyone. Josh
just folded up his notes and put his can of
cola down on that. And I've never seen you do that,
And I thought you were trying to preserve this cheap.
(01:04):
This thing is tougher than they. Okay, so it was
a sound thing. Sure, it's a sound dampening technique. Can
look at us after all these years. I came up
with that up in our game um, so, Chuck, do
you remember we did a social Security number episode? Did we?
I thought, so, you don't remember that one. It was
(01:24):
one of those ones where you're like, my eyes are
going to bleed because this is so boring, but it
turned out to be pretty interesting. It was one of
those remember that. But we should give a little bit
of a refresher on social Security numbers. Okay, yeah, here's mine.
Oh you're gonna give your your to eight seven, nine four. No,
I don't even because what if I just accidentally said
(01:44):
someone else's like made one up? Yeah, and some dudes listening,
it's like, dude, how'd you know Todd? It's always Todd?
I don't know. So, so security numbers, get this everybody.
They first started being issued in November of nine six,
(02:04):
and the Social Security Administration was created to administer a
new deal program of federal benefits, things like welfare or
retirement benefits, medicare UM. The entire reason any of us
originally were given a Social Security number was to track
our lifetime earnings and to um determine how much we'd
(02:28):
put into Social Security so that when we retired, they
could determine how much we should get out in retirement.
That's why everyone has a SOFAL security number. And because
there are nine digits um, there's something like a billion
different possible combinations. And we're about halfway towards using up
the SOB security numbers, but probably gaining fast. We are
(02:51):
starting to gain much faster than we were before, a
good point, but we still got plenty of time. But
because of this um, social security numbers get tired when
you die, which we'll get to. But originally, when when
you were given social Security number, that was it. It
wasn't meant for anything else but to track your earnings
in to figure out your retirement. Right. Yeah, not like
(03:12):
when you get to go to get a haircut basically
and they ask you for your Social Security number. And
the seventies, the federal government said, okay, there's a couple
of other things that you should really have your SOLI
Security number. For a passport, UM makes sense if you
go to open a bank account that was a new
one too, I'll buy that UM. But then, like you said,
like as computers came along, now everybody asked what it's
(03:35):
become an identifier in a in an authenticator, and that
is really bad. That is not what we should be
doing with social Security numbers. It really not only that,
but the phone numbers and everything and addresses. It just
annoys me. And I'm not like a conspiracy guy. It's
not like I think, like, oh, what are they going
to do with this? It just annoys me. Well, and
(03:56):
I can't get a haircut without provide. I'm like, I
have cash in my and you have scissors. Can we
just do this right? Can we do it like Floyd style?
You know? But it annoys me. But even if you
take away the annoyance, companies have proven time and time
and time again that they're not to be trusted protecting
your SO Security number because to authenticate you saying who
(04:20):
you are who you say you are, they've got to
have your SO Security number on file. And when somebody
hacks into their databases, they get your SO Security number.
All of your information is right there, and it's become
a real problem. But it's also become a real problem
living a modern life without giving out SO security number. Right.
(04:40):
So we say all this to point out that if
for some reason, you didn't have a Social Security number
any longer, it would be tough to navigate life. And
that actually happens to some people. Yeah, if you've seen
the movie Brazil, Oh is it like this? You never
saw Brazil. It's it's sort of this in a future
(05:01):
dystopian world, but you know, basically like it's it's bureaucracy
at its best of someone who's you know, dead or
not dead, and the government mixes it up. Is that
what Brazil is about? Yeah? I did not know that. Yeah,
I'm glad you brought that up thing because we would
have heard from people. It's it's an Yeah, it's good, right,
(05:21):
it is. And you should go listen to the movie
Crush episode on Brazil with Jonathan Colton. Okay, yeah, I
didn't know that. Why no one slipped past me. I
wasn't talking to you, but sure, you're welcome to listen. Thanks,
I'm part of everybody. I had to go to the
Social Security Office recently to get a card because of
this job in our new company. Really, yeah, I had
(05:44):
to prove, you know whatever, that I'm alive. You didn't unemployable.
I guess you didn't just give him your passport. I
couldn't find my passport because I'm in between houses right
now and it was buried somewhere. Okay, but you do
have it, because we're probably going to Toronto this year.
I do have it. I did find it kind of
after I went to the Social Security office. But all
(06:04):
that was just to say that if you think the
d m V is a pit of despair, just go
to the Social Security I want to It's not fun.
I really don't want to know. So, um, okay, you
can imagine how bad it is when everything's just hunky
dory and you just need a copy of your card.
That's all you needed. Right For some people, some poor
(06:27):
SAPs out there, they are thought by the government and
listed by the government as having died, and that is
a big problem if you're alive. Yes, because again, you
need your Social Security number for everything to start with.
And then secondly, because we have enough social Security numbers
to go around. Like I said, when you die, you're
(06:50):
so security number gets retired with you and they hang
in in the rafters of your local NBA franchise. It's
exactly right. If you look really closely, they're all up there.
But um, that's that is a problem for somebody who
gets listed as dead on what's called the death Master file.
Do I need to say it now? Even somebody listening
(07:12):
to the very first stuff. You should know right now.
They know what you're saying. There's a bunch of good
band names in here. But Death Master File is pretty good.
So uh. It's also called the Social Security Death Index,
but death Master files way better. I think you would agree.
It depends on who you're talking to. I think genealogists
typically call it the s S d I. Everybody else
calls it the death Master File. That's what I saw,
(07:34):
you know why, because they don't know how to party
or they get their own little weird party going on.
Oh yeah, I didn't think about that. Um. Yeah, you
gotta look at people differently sometimes. I was trying to
think of the bumper sticker. Genealogists do it blank in
the in the archives. Genealogists do it with their DNA,
with their dead ancestors. It's two bumper stickers, just having
(08:00):
ellipses had become of one. So uh, all right, where
were we the d MF. Alright, it's it was established
at the same time the Social Security numbers were back
in nineteen thirty six, and then it took all the
way to night before the public could even see this list,
right right, there was a freedom of Information Act that
(08:21):
was filed back in night um, and there was a
lawsuit in the federal court said you know what, yeah,
this is this is public information. You have to publish this.
And there's actually like a master death master file that's
called the New Newmandent and that's like everything, and that's
the that's the one that the death master file is
(08:43):
derived from. The public version of it is the death
master file, right which, when you die, there a bunch
of ways that your name can get to the s
s A, the Social Security Administration. Sometimes it's a funeral home.
Sometimes it's from like a spittle. Sometimes it's from your family, um,
because it's the family's responsibility ultimately to report it. But
(09:06):
most of the time the funeral home is the one
that actually does is like a service. I wouldn't have
known that, but I also saw, um, well now you know, um,
there's probably some poor stuff. You should know a listener,
our condolences, who's dealing with this right now? It's your
responsibility to go report this to the Social Security Administration. Yeah, okay,
that's sad. I also saw that your bank, the postal service,
(09:31):
some other randos are legally allowed to report your death
as well, so as the post off post person to
saying like, I haven't picked up their mail in like
three weeks, they're dead. To me, I think I should
just report that. I don't. I don't know I could.
I could not find the procedure from that anything other
than a couple of good sources mentioned the postal service
(09:54):
as a legal place, the legal entity that can report
your death to the FEDS. Right, So why do they
want this death Master File? Of course, if you have
paid UM, well, the government needs to know if you're
not around anymore. It's kind of that simple. There's a
couple of reasons why. Yes, they need to know, because
you get a little dough They can't have your Soubsecurity
(10:16):
number out there. They need to know that you're deceased
UM because they don't want to be paying um income
tax refunds if somebody starts filing them fraudulently. They don't
want people opening bank accounts in your name. They want
to make sure that you're listed as dead. And so
that's what the Death Master File does. It kind of
(10:37):
serves as the storehouse for all the people in America
who have been dead basically since the sixties. But it
goes as far back as nineteen thirty six or thirty seven,
which is surprisingly more than a hundred million people. Yes,
but they think that there's maybe up to sixteen million
dead people missing from this list. It's not it's not perfect.
(10:58):
We'll spoil now. I guess we should then follow that
statement by saying there are tens of thousands of people
on that list who should not be on that list,
right exactly, But before we get to there, um, This
Death Masterfile originally was so Social Security could track who
was dead and who wasn't, so they could determine who
to pay Social Security Administration benefits out to the survivors.
(11:19):
Get this, did you know this? If you're in America
and you're the recipient, you're the survivor of somebody who
gets Social Security, you get a cool two hundred and
fifty five dollars to help bury them. Yeah. That's when
I said you get a little dough that I meant little,
a little dough. Yeah, maybe like one of the fancy
handles on the casket would be covered by that. I
(11:40):
don't even think you can get cremated for two hundred dollars.
I don't know. I don't even think they'll leave you
in a ditch out back for two hundred dollars. A
sky burial costs more than that. Maybe that try state
crematorium would take your two hundred fifty dollars. But that's it.
Do you remember them? Oh? Sure, yeah evil? So uh,
(12:00):
like you said, mistakes are made. And this is where
it turns slightly Brazil, there was an investigation in two
thousand eleven and they actually named grave Mistakes, which is
hysterical by Scripps Howard News service. And what they did
was they took uh this master death file from three
different years two thousand eight, two thousand eleven. They created
(12:22):
a computer program to basically just compare them to see
what they came up with. And that they found, uh third,
almost thirty two thousand living people who were listed as deceased,
and ninety eight or two thousand eight that were then
taken off that list after they realized that they goofed
up in two thousand eleven. So these people had spent months, years,
(12:45):
maybe um listed as dead. And here's the problem. It's
bad enough if you go to apply for Medicare because
you've retired or Social Security benefits and the government says
denied UM you're dead and you're listed as dead, because
as far as the government's concerned, if you're on this,
you're dead. To them. That's bad enough. But remember that
(13:08):
Freedom of Information Act Um lawsuit that opened the thing
up to being published publicly. The reason why that suit
was filed is because the business community said, hey, we
can really use that thing there. It's basically it would
be like a big do not take checks from these
people list for all dead Americans. Because if somebody comes
(13:31):
to us and wants to open a bank account, wants
to get an insurance policy, wants to get a car,
wants to get a job, it doesn't matter, wants to
do something where they could take us for a ride,
if they're a fraud, then if we had this list
to check against, like social Security numbers or names or whatever,
we could root out fraud and we could defend ourselves
(13:52):
from identity theft and the fraud that's perpetrated by it.
And so banks, insurance company, car dealerships, cable companies, employers, everybody,
other government agencies, all barbers, they don't forget them. They
all use this death Master file, which is available publicly
(14:13):
to check your applications against. And if the government says
that you're dead. It says that on this file, whether
it's right or wrong, you're dead. And that's a whole
lot of problems for you. We're gonna get into those
right after this, and things chock chock stop. So before
(14:58):
we broke, I was talking about that, uh, that scripts
um investigation, and there was an Inspector General's report in
two thousand and eight that kind of pulled back the
curtain on this stuff, and Social Security said, uh, yeah,
that's about right. There's there's a lot of people tens
of thousands that we think are dead and aren't dead,
(15:19):
but they're they're success rates pretty good. Yeah, and he said,
they said, but we're at a ninety nine point five
nine rate of accuracy, which is not too bad for
a government bureaucracy. That's really good. And they said that
of the time, can you can fix it in just
a year, just a hellish year. Yeah, not too bad. Um.
(15:43):
And so they basically admitted two being a government. Uh.
I don't want to knock them too much because it
feels like everyone's always, you know, knocking government work. But
they're basically saying like, yeah, man, it these names are miskeeeds.
Or these numbers are miskeyed. Sometimes happens, so UM. The
(16:06):
thing is that point for one percent error rate, that's
tens of thousands of people every year. There's like two
point seven million people added to this list every year
who die in America, right, so it adds up to
a lot of errors. The thing is that SoC Security
Administration UM, so they take their Death Master file, they
(16:28):
handed over to the National Technical Information Service, and they're
the ones who distributed to all the insurance companies, the
genealogy websites, I think ancestry dot com publishes it UM,
the yeah insurance companies, everybody who wants to do a
background check on you, they all get their their versions
of this from them, the National Technical Information Service. But
(16:52):
part of the agreement to get this from them you
have to pay for it, is that you have to
keep your DMF up to date because if you just
buy one every once in a while UM and the
Social Security Administration finds an error on and updates their file.
If you don't go get the new file, your old
file is still going to have that error. And that's
(17:14):
when it becomes problematic for the people who are listed
as deceased. When they try to go get credit and
it kind of has a tendency to spread once it's
out there. Yeah. So, like I said, sometimes it's being
mis keyed. UM. One I think they said like one
out of every two hundred is just from clerical error. Um.
(17:35):
Sometimes it can be like, um, a family member goes
to report to death and they accidentally make a mistake
where they might end up being on the death list. Yeah.
I don't know how that happens, but it does happen.
There are people like Don Pilger human error, married du
Bord who who apparently married du Board just gave up.
(17:56):
She She's like, my husband can get credit cards still,
I'm just gonna live off of uh. Sometimes you this
one woman named Candice Atkins just accidentally clicked deceased on
a tax return on an electronic filing, and that was it.
Can you imagine now, I can't believe there's not an undo.
That's yeah, I was looking at me that she had submitted.
(18:16):
I guess you could probably have undone it in the moment,
but she didn't realize it and submitted it, right, But
you should still be able to undo that. Um. And
then there are some weird things these uh anomalies that
you dug up. Um. More than false listings made in
two thousand seven were from Illinois. Yep. It sounds like
(18:37):
a hiccup in the system to me. I hiccup in
the system or a super lazy data entry person you think. Yeah. Uh.
More than two million Americans were falsely listed as dying
on the fifte and that was just an internal policy,
is to use the fifte as a default value when
they didn't know at the middle of the month. Sounds
(18:58):
good to me. Um, I guess that was just the
question of not going to the trouble of verifying the
information right so um. And it can happen the other
way too, you can be I think at least six
million dead Americans are labeled as alive, which is a
huge problem because you're you're just your information is out
there ready to be abused by the nefarious. Well, no,
(19:22):
that's the opposite. If you're If you're listed as deceased
but you're still alive, your information is being published and
can be used for identity fraud. If you're actually dead
and not listed. If somebody knows that you're dead and
not listed, they can use your stuff to to perpetrate
fraud against the government. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah,
(19:42):
sixty seven thousand of those people, of those numbers were
used to report three billion dollars in income between two
thousand and six and two thousand eleven. That's a lot
of text return refunds, so fraud. Yeah, So it's a
problem both ways, where either you're dead and you're not
listed on there, or you're not dead and they listed
(20:06):
you anyway. And like I was saying earlier, this once
this information gets out there, because there's so many different
entities getting this list, once it's out there, it stays
out there. It's very tough to go around to everyone
and and get this information changed. Even once you get
it changed with the Social Security Administration, because while it's
(20:27):
a requirement to keep your your list up to date,
if you're a subscriber, there's no enforcement to it. There's
nobody who comes along and says, let me see your list.
Oh it's not up to date. Give me give me
ten dollars that you're fine. There's nobody enforcing it. So
once it's out there, it's very tough to undo. It
takes forever, uh well less than a year on average supposedly.
(20:53):
So there are a lot of horror stories, UM for
what this can due to someone's life. UM. This one
per Sin Rivers. What's the first name, Judy Rivers. Judy
Rivers Rivers Cuomo. UM. Police actually detained Judy Rivers from
using because she used a debit card, her own debit
card at a Walmart at Walmart Plus. She also had
(21:15):
a mountain dew bottle size meth lab in her pocket. Uh.
But in like it seems like all of these cases.
It ranges from stuff like, um, your insurance gets all
messed up, or your maybe disability checks or your Medicaid payments,
or you're trying to get a home loan or trying
(21:35):
to get a credit card, like anything that you can
think of where a social Security number might help. You
can't get a haircut. You should see how long the
hair is on these people. Even if you have cash,
they won't do it. Rivers ended up living out of
her car for six months. Yeah, she had just a
really bad time of it for five years. UM. And
at first she didn't know what was going on because
(21:57):
she was frozen out of her bank accounts. Because this
is something said like like you you can't get future loans,
you can't get future insurance policies, you can't get future credit.
But also the stuff that you already have, your current
bank accounts, all that stuff gets frozen because you're listed
is dead, and so that comes up on the computer
(22:17):
and your account gets frozen. And even when you show
up and say hey, it's me, you know me, the
teller can't do anything about it. The bank can't do
anything about it. It's it's done. And now you've just
been pitted against the system. Yes, and it's like there's
no door you can go knock on and say, hey,
(22:39):
we can clear this up in just a few minutes.
I'm clearly alive. You just click the few little things
you need to click to get my life back. Because
the c US government it's not nearly that easy. So
I guess, said Chuck, that brings up what to do
because there actually are procedures in place, Like we said,
the Social Security Administration says this is not fully accurate.
Anybody gets this list needs to keep updating it as
(23:00):
we update it. I think they released an updated list weekly.
They don't even tell you though, you find out the
hard way almost always. That's a big one. Yeah, it's
not like they say, by the way, we found an error, UM,
because they don't know. They don't know you're alive. Right,
So I actually called the Social Security Administration. I did
because I wanted answers. You didn't go to the office. No,
(23:21):
I didn't know. It was a little laterward. It wasn't cowardless,
it was laziness. So UM I was talking to like
just the the guy who answered, and he knew exactly
what I was talking about, knew all the procedures. But
I asked him. I was like, do you guys ever
uncover this yourselves or is it when people come to
you that you know there's a mistake. He's like, yeah,
when people come to us. So supposedly there's all these
(23:42):
reforms in place and all that. But I think still
for the most part, when an error is uncovered, it's
because you found it out. But even if they do
find it out, yes, what you said is true, they
don't inform the person, which is kind of a violation
of the UM the Privacy Act, I would think. So
from what I understand, it is like anytime your confidential
(24:05):
information is breached and made public, UM, you're supposed to
be informed about that. So the SSA should be sending
out letters, but as far as I know, they do not.
I love this quote in here, um, under the section
on what to do, Like the Social Security Administration is
trying to correct this, and there's a quote from someone
who works there that said that sometimes they'll go out
(24:27):
and see if old Americans are really still alive, and
it it says this, we go to medicare and see
if anyone hasn't been to medicare for three years, and
if they haven't been, we try to go out and
make a phone call to call them and see if
they're you know, still here. And the interviewer was like,
(24:48):
are you drunk? That's what it sounds like. That is
the follow up question. Oh man, So yeah, they I
mean supposedly because of things like that. Scripts Howard News
Service investigation in two eleven sixteen minutes did a big one,
and I think, yeah, for sure, Um, yes, it is
(25:09):
like the truth of what you just have ran through
me like a bolt. Um. But the Social Security Administration
has finally kind of started to be responsive and they
are supposedly undertaking reforms, including having investigators try to root
this out themselves, which ironically they're relying on other government
databases like this guy said medicare to check their records against.
(25:31):
They've stopped taking reports from the state and now only
except um direct reports from people. But that in itself
opened up another problem because they went back and cleared
out the records of like five million Americans whose deaths
have been reported from state databases, so that six million
(25:51):
went to something like eleven million of dead people who
aren't on there. Now, are they actually recommending that you
pull your credit report three times a year? Yes? Really? Yes,
that seems like I don't know, You're not like that
affects your credit. I don't know if that one does. Really.
(26:12):
I know it's free for sure, but I don't know
if it affects your credit or not. But yeah, so
you get access to your the credit reports from the
three big bureaus, right, are you gonna do that? You
have you set up calendar reminders? No, I'm going through
now like once a quarter. I haven't the rest of
your life to make sure you're not listed as dead.
I haven't had time today yet. It seems like if
you're an active consumer in the world, you would find
(26:34):
out very quickly, very quickly. Um, without having to do that. Yeah,
that scripts service. Though, when they found the like thirty
four thousand people who have been listed as dead, they
tried to contact as many of them as they could,
and they said about half of the people were well
aware that they were listed as dead names through nightmare struggles,
but strangely like half had no idea what they were
(26:55):
talking about. So it's like, what kind of life do
you have to live to not be aware of that?
Because you you or I would come up against it
within a week or a month or something. It seems like, yeah,
like there would be something that came up where it's like,
wait a minute, but like it says this information isn't
is incomplete, or it says you're dead or something like that.
We find out pretty or just to go get money
(27:16):
out of a cash machine, it might say sorry, your
pen doesn't work. But I think the recommendation is in
addition to finding out that your listed is dead, there's
also a lot of other stuff that that you can
kind of keep tabs on by looking at your credit
report three times a year, once every four months. Yeah,
and they say the real solution for all of us
(27:37):
would be if every company on the planet doesn't require
Well here's the thing though, they can't legally require your
social Security number two open up or start a telephone
in your name at a home, but they'll ask for it.
And if you refuse to give it, like, you may
not be able to get at all, or you may
just have a really really hard time. Yeah, they can
(27:59):
refuse to do busin with you. And that's the crux
of the problem because that de facto means that you
need to play ball whether you want to give your
Social Security number out or not. Tough, if you want
that internet service or that cable service, or you want
that haircut, you're gonna have to play ball. Yeah, it
was I remember growing up. It was a like I
(28:21):
remember I had a Social Security card and I remember
my mom being like, you gotta put that in your
desk royer. Remember, don't touch it. Ever, if somebody comes
near your your drawer, you shoot them with with this gun. Yeah,
it was crazy. And now it's just like I'd probably
give out my social like twice a month. Right. But
but because of those breaches, because so many people have
(28:45):
your Social Security number now, and because hackers have gotten
really good at getting into things like um, I think
it was Experience or TransUnion who were hacked in two
thousand seventeen. Yeah, that was huge. Um that that was
it was not only I read not only did it
basically just totally erode the public's trust and credit bureaus
(29:06):
to keep our stuff private, like they were the ones
who were supposed to be unhackable. And I think a
hundred and thirty seven million social security numbers made it
out into the wild from that hack. Um that that
that not only eroded trust in the credit bureaus, it
was the beginning of the end for using social security
(29:26):
numbers like we do to authenticate or as identify irs companies.
Some are moving away from that now, right, Yeah, because
they're getting sued and they're getting fines and they just
realized they can't keep this stuff protected. The problem is
no one knows what's next. A lot of people have
talked about like blockchain, but nobody understands blockchain, which, by
the way, we should totally do a blockchain episode. Um,
(29:48):
but everybody's kind of like, it's probably gonna be blockchain,
But first time to go figure out what blockchain is,
and then we'll figure out how to do social security
numbers through blockchain. I'm sure in some offices they're like,
you know, the old barcode on the back of the
neck seems silly, but surewood work. Have you seen Brazil?
Should we take a break? Oh yeah, let's all right.
Let's take another break, and we're gonna talk a little
(30:10):
bit about the rest of the world right after this
and things and chop and chock stop. So chuck, we're
(30:45):
going around the world in eighty days in our ninth
little balloon. Actually, I said, we're going to talk about
the rest of the world. We're only going to talk
about one more place in the world. Hey man, I
got Canada. Oh yeah, the UK. Okay. Basically, anywhere there's
a country with a bureaucracy, in a country where people die,
there's going to be someone erroneously listed as dead. All right,
(31:08):
so let's go to India. In India, it's not always
an accident. Uh, sometimes it's an error. But sometimes, um,
you can do what they call quote killing people on
paper end quote um in order to say their property
is mine, to lay claim to something legally, you can uh,
(31:29):
you can do so especially I mean they don't it's
not legal, but it's something that happens no, you can
bribe an official who will say, yeah, okay, yes, this
person is dead, thank you for reporting their death. Here
is their land or cousin or whoever. Well supposedly in
the um northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Um, it's become
(31:50):
a real problem there. Um. And there was a man
there is a man name Lal Bahari who in nineteen
seventy six at the just twenty two, found out he
was listed as dead and his uncle did his uncle
do this or did his uncle just get the land?
And his uncle's family, his uncle's family, they're the one
that that purposefully listed him as dead just so they
(32:14):
could get the land. Yep. He went to go get
a business loan. He was a loomer and he went
to get a business loan. And to get a business loan,
he needed documentation of his identity. When he went to
go get that, the local records office is like, you're dead.
And it took him seventeen years to undead himself. Yeah.
Fortunately for the world. He had a great sense of
(32:36):
um absurdity of humor like yes, but also like the
humor in absurdy, like he he realized, like this is
so preposterous, and he really used that as motivation to
make huge moves. Yeah, he would answer the phone, um
as dead person, which is uh talkin silent uh. He
(33:00):
would answer the phone like that. He organized the Uttar
Pradesh Reta Singh which is Udra Pradesh Dead People's Association,
And it seems like really brought a lot of like
attention to this through like almost like public absurdist public
demonstrations too. Yeah, like parades of dead people walking around
(33:21):
on the steps of like the government buildings and stuff
like that. And finally he did have his death overturned legally. Um,
did you see whether or not he got his land?
I didn't see that. Actually a great question. I didn't
even think about that, but yeah I I did not.
I don't know, but two people, um, because of his
(33:44):
efforts in that area of India where had their deaths overturned. Yeah,
that was just in one year. Even which why I
think is cool about him as he founded this organization
and got his life back in ninety four, it still
stayed on as the you know, the driving force behind
the Udhapradesh Dead Person's Association and won an ignoble prize
(34:08):
for it. Not bad. We did an episode on that too.
You remember the ignobles man. That was a long time ago. Yep.
So one more thing I we never really actually said
what to do if you end up listed incorrectly is
dead on the death Master file. Start answering the phone
is dead? Chuck, Yeah, exactly, shame the government. Also, the
(34:29):
other thing you're supposed to do first is go in
person to your local Social Security Administration. And by the way,
this is information directly from the s s A to
me to you, because I called them. The guy said,
just bring a driver's license at passport and we'll handle
it from there. And I was like, wait, that's it.
He's like, yeah, you know, the information matches, your picture matches.
(34:51):
That's all you need. And he said, and by handle it,
you'll mean nothing will happen here. That's right, right, And
I go, so do you give the person? So they
give you a letter saying this person's alive, they were
listed as deceased by mistake, give them their credit or whatever. Um,
we love you, so Security Administration And I said, do
you do you give the letter then once they prove
it or um. He's like no, once the file is updated,
(35:14):
then we typically send a letter out. And I was like,
how long is that, you know, And it's weeks easily,
if not months before you're going to get a letter.
But if you find out, the first thing you want
to do go to your local SO security office with
your passport and or your driver's license and say, surprise, yeah,
I saw that one person even had to have a
(35:35):
note from their doctor verifying that they were indeed alive. Weird,
weird life. That must be weird, gentry. So, uh, if
you want to know more about the death Master file,
you can go look it up. It's kind of interesting actually,
as far as bureaucracy goes. And since I said bureaucracy,
it's time for a listener, ma'am, I'm gonna call this um.
(36:00):
This is a follow up on the rape Kits episode,
which we got a lot of amazing and sad stories
from that one. Uh. This is about the money. The
money's because remember on the show we said that you know,
you don't you get to pay for that stuff for treatment? Yeah,
apparently you can get money back, which we've meant to
(36:20):
go back and re record a section and did not.
So this is by means of following up on that.
Hey guys, a longtime listener first time writer finished the
episode on rape kits and realize I could offer some
information that will hopefully bring some peace of mind. I
work as a medical biller for a hospital in the Midwest.
Part of my job is processing the sexual assault claims
(36:40):
that come in at our hospital. We have a program
for those who present to the hospital UH after a
sexual assault. We in partner with the state, cover all
the charges that result from the initially our visit, and
the patient has given a voucher for any relevant follow
up care that they may need over the next three months.
Is awesome. It is, and we realized that a lot
(37:01):
of states do this after we had recorded and published
the show. I'm so glad this person wrote in thould
say it is good to know. We also take steps
to ensure that the patient will never see a bill
or be contacted by our department regards to their visit
to reduce any re traumatization. I'm the point person for
this process here handle all the claims personally. I'm not
(37:23):
sure how many hospitals implement this program, but I hope
this helps you all know that at least here we
do as much as we can to alleviate any unnecessary
burden from our patients during the stressful and sensitive times.
Thanks for all you guys do. You have transformed many
days years spent in a cubicle into opportunities to learn.
Keep doing the great work. And that is from Maria.
(37:44):
Thank you very much. That was amazing. Yeah, Maria, thanks
for doing that job too. That's tough stuff. That was
the antithesis of another email we got who basically said,
regarding your little soapbox about how society should take on
that cost, keep your politics to yourself because I disagree.
I don't know if I saw that one. It was
(38:04):
a bad one and I just wanted to say that
that person is a butt head. Oh no, wait, maybe
I did see that. I couldn't even bring myself to respond.
I think I did, and I did respond. Oh what
did you say? I don't remember. Did you tell him
they were about hecko jump in a lake? There? You? Um? Well,
if you want to get in touch with us, whether
we think you're a butt head or a saint, it
(38:25):
doesn't matter. We still want to hear from you, you
can go on to stuffy sho dot com check out
our social links. You can also send us a good
old fashioned email wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, uh,
spray with perfume, and send it off to stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
(38:46):
a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, they're friends. That's Josh. And for this week's Select,
I chose our episode that takes a frank and thrilling
look at what happens when the government thinks you're dead.
As you can imagine, nothing good is the answer to that.
I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
(00:20):
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck, Bryan,
there's Jerry over there. Jerry's not eating anything today. Chuk.
There is clear And did you just do that as
a coaster? Yes, I don't want to make a chinky
(00:43):
sound every time, Like Okay, I thought I don't want that.
I want this now, I get it. Did you hear that?
You didn't hear anything? No, I'm I said everyone. Josh
just folded up his notes and put his can of
cola down on that. And I've never seen you do that,
And I thought you were trying to preserve this cheap.
(01:04):
This thing is tougher than they. Okay, so it was
a sound thing. Sure, it's a sound dampening technique. Can
look at us after all these years. I came up
with that up in our game um, so, Chuck, do
you remember we did a social Security number episode? Did we?
I thought, so, you don't remember that one. It was
(01:24):
one of those ones where you're like, my eyes are
going to bleed because this is so boring, but it
turned out to be pretty interesting. It was one of
those remember that. But we should give a little bit
of a refresher on social Security numbers. Okay, yeah, here's mine.
Oh you're gonna give your your to eight seven, nine four. No,
I don't even because what if I just accidentally said
(01:44):
someone else's like made one up? Yeah, and some dudes listening,
it's like, dude, how'd you know Todd? It's always Todd?
I don't know. So, so security numbers, get this everybody.
They first started being issued in November of nine six,
(02:04):
and the Social Security Administration was created to administer a
new deal program of federal benefits, things like welfare or
retirement benefits, medicare UM. The entire reason any of us
originally were given a Social Security number was to track
our lifetime earnings and to um determine how much we'd
(02:28):
put into Social Security so that when we retired, they
could determine how much we should get out in retirement.
That's why everyone has a SOFAL security number. And because
there are nine digits um, there's something like a billion
different possible combinations. And we're about halfway towards using up
the SOB security numbers, but probably gaining fast. We are
(02:51):
starting to gain much faster than we were before, a
good point, but we still got plenty of time. But
because of this um, social security numbers get tired when
you die, which we'll get to. But originally, when when
you were given social Security number, that was it. It
wasn't meant for anything else but to track your earnings
in to figure out your retirement. Right. Yeah, not like
(03:12):
when you get to go to get a haircut basically
and they ask you for your Social Security number. And
the seventies, the federal government said, okay, there's a couple
of other things that you should really have your SOLI
Security number. For a passport, UM makes sense if you
go to open a bank account that was a new
one too, I'll buy that UM. But then, like you said,
like as computers came along, now everybody asked what it's
(03:35):
become an identifier in a in an authenticator, and that
is really bad. That is not what we should be
doing with social Security numbers. It really not only that,
but the phone numbers and everything and addresses. It just
annoys me. And I'm not like a conspiracy guy. It's
not like I think, like, oh, what are they going
to do with this? It just annoys me. Well, and
(03:56):
I can't get a haircut without provide. I'm like, I
have cash in my and you have scissors. Can we
just do this right? Can we do it like Floyd style?
You know? But it annoys me. But even if you
take away the annoyance, companies have proven time and time
and time again that they're not to be trusted protecting
your SO Security number because to authenticate you saying who
(04:20):
you are who you say you are, they've got to
have your SO Security number on file. And when somebody
hacks into their databases, they get your SO Security number.
All of your information is right there, and it's become
a real problem. But it's also become a real problem
living a modern life without giving out SO security number. Right.
(04:40):
So we say all this to point out that if
for some reason, you didn't have a Social Security number
any longer, it would be tough to navigate life. And
that actually happens to some people. Yeah, if you've seen
the movie Brazil, Oh is it like this? You never
saw Brazil. It's it's sort of this in a future
(05:01):
dystopian world, but you know, basically like it's it's bureaucracy
at its best of someone who's you know, dead or
not dead, and the government mixes it up. Is that
what Brazil is about? Yeah? I did not know that. Yeah,
I'm glad you brought that up thing because we would
have heard from people. It's it's an Yeah, it's good, right,
(05:21):
it is. And you should go listen to the movie
Crush episode on Brazil with Jonathan Colton. Okay, yeah, I
didn't know that. Why no one slipped past me. I
wasn't talking to you, but sure, you're welcome to listen. Thanks,
I'm part of everybody. I had to go to the
Social Security Office recently to get a card because of
this job in our new company. Really, yeah, I had
(05:44):
to prove, you know whatever, that I'm alive. You didn't unemployable.
I guess you didn't just give him your passport. I
couldn't find my passport because I'm in between houses right
now and it was buried somewhere. Okay, but you do
have it, because we're probably going to Toronto this year.
I do have it. I did find it kind of
after I went to the Social Security office. But all
(06:04):
that was just to say that if you think the
d m V is a pit of despair, just go
to the Social Security I want to It's not fun.
I really don't want to know. So, um, okay, you
can imagine how bad it is when everything's just hunky
dory and you just need a copy of your card.
That's all you needed. Right For some people, some poor
(06:27):
SAPs out there, they are thought by the government and
listed by the government as having died, and that is
a big problem if you're alive. Yes, because again, you
need your Social Security number for everything to start with.
And then secondly, because we have enough social Security numbers
to go around. Like I said, when you die, you're
(06:50):
so security number gets retired with you and they hang
in in the rafters of your local NBA franchise. It's
exactly right. If you look really closely, they're all up there.
But um, that's that is a problem for somebody who
gets listed as dead on what's called the death Master file.
Do I need to say it now? Even somebody listening
(07:12):
to the very first stuff. You should know right now.
They know what you're saying. There's a bunch of good
band names in here. But Death Master File is pretty good.
So uh. It's also called the Social Security Death Index,
but death Master files way better. I think you would agree.
It depends on who you're talking to. I think genealogists
typically call it the s S d I. Everybody else
calls it the death Master File. That's what I saw,
(07:34):
you know why, because they don't know how to party
or they get their own little weird party going on.
Oh yeah, I didn't think about that. Um. Yeah, you
gotta look at people differently sometimes. I was trying to
think of the bumper sticker. Genealogists do it blank in
the in the archives. Genealogists do it with their DNA,
with their dead ancestors. It's two bumper stickers, just having
(08:00):
ellipses had become of one. So uh, all right, where
were we the d MF. Alright, it's it was established
at the same time the Social Security numbers were back
in nineteen thirty six, and then it took all the
way to night before the public could even see this list,
right right, there was a freedom of Information Act that
(08:21):
was filed back in night um, and there was a
lawsuit in the federal court said you know what, yeah,
this is this is public information. You have to publish this.
And there's actually like a master death master file that's
called the New Newmandent and that's like everything, and that's
the that's the one that the death master file is
(08:43):
derived from. The public version of it is the death
master file, right which, when you die, there a bunch
of ways that your name can get to the s
s A, the Social Security Administration. Sometimes it's a funeral home.
Sometimes it's from like a spittle. Sometimes it's from your family, um,
because it's the family's responsibility ultimately to report it. But
(09:06):
most of the time the funeral home is the one
that actually does is like a service. I wouldn't have
known that, but I also saw, um, well now you know, um,
there's probably some poor stuff. You should know a listener,
our condolences, who's dealing with this right now? It's your
responsibility to go report this to the Social Security Administration. Yeah, okay,
that's sad. I also saw that your bank, the postal service,
(09:31):
some other randos are legally allowed to report your death
as well, so as the post off post person to
saying like, I haven't picked up their mail in like
three weeks, they're dead. To me, I think I should
just report that. I don't. I don't know I could.
I could not find the procedure from that anything other
than a couple of good sources mentioned the postal service
(09:54):
as a legal place, the legal entity that can report
your death to the FEDS. Right, So why do they
want this death Master File? Of course, if you have
paid UM, well, the government needs to know if you're
not around anymore. It's kind of that simple. There's a
couple of reasons why. Yes, they need to know, because
you get a little dough They can't have your Soubsecurity
(10:16):
number out there. They need to know that you're deceased
UM because they don't want to be paying um income
tax refunds if somebody starts filing them fraudulently. They don't
want people opening bank accounts in your name. They want
to make sure that you're listed as dead. And so
that's what the Death Master File does. It kind of
(10:37):
serves as the storehouse for all the people in America
who have been dead basically since the sixties. But it
goes as far back as nineteen thirty six or thirty seven,
which is surprisingly more than a hundred million people. Yes,
but they think that there's maybe up to sixteen million
dead people missing from this list. It's not it's not perfect.
(10:58):
We'll spoil now. I guess we should then follow that
statement by saying there are tens of thousands of people
on that list who should not be on that list,
right exactly, But before we get to there, um, This
Death Masterfile originally was so Social Security could track who
was dead and who wasn't, so they could determine who
to pay Social Security Administration benefits out to the survivors.
(11:19):
Get this, did you know this? If you're in America
and you're the recipient, you're the survivor of somebody who
gets Social Security, you get a cool two hundred and
fifty five dollars to help bury them. Yeah. That's when
I said you get a little dough that I meant little,
a little dough. Yeah, maybe like one of the fancy
handles on the casket would be covered by that. I
(11:40):
don't even think you can get cremated for two hundred dollars.
I don't know. I don't even think they'll leave you
in a ditch out back for two hundred dollars. A
sky burial costs more than that. Maybe that try state
crematorium would take your two hundred fifty dollars. But that's it.
Do you remember them? Oh? Sure, yeah evil? So uh,
(12:00):
like you said, mistakes are made. And this is where
it turns slightly Brazil, there was an investigation in two
thousand eleven and they actually named grave Mistakes, which is
hysterical by Scripps Howard News service. And what they did
was they took uh this master death file from three
different years two thousand eight, two thousand eleven. They created
(12:22):
a computer program to basically just compare them to see
what they came up with. And that they found, uh third,
almost thirty two thousand living people who were listed as deceased,
and ninety eight or two thousand eight that were then
taken off that list after they realized that they goofed
up in two thousand eleven. So these people had spent months, years,
(12:45):
maybe um listed as dead. And here's the problem. It's
bad enough if you go to apply for Medicare because
you've retired or Social Security benefits and the government says
denied UM you're dead and you're listed as dead, because
as far as the government's concerned, if you're on this,
you're dead. To them. That's bad enough. But remember that
(13:08):
Freedom of Information Act Um lawsuit that opened the thing
up to being published publicly. The reason why that suit
was filed is because the business community said, hey, we
can really use that thing there. It's basically it would
be like a big do not take checks from these
people list for all dead Americans. Because if somebody comes
(13:31):
to us and wants to open a bank account, wants
to get an insurance policy, wants to get a car,
wants to get a job, it doesn't matter, wants to
do something where they could take us for a ride,
if they're a fraud, then if we had this list
to check against, like social Security numbers or names or whatever,
we could root out fraud and we could defend ourselves
(13:52):
from identity theft and the fraud that's perpetrated by it.
And so banks, insurance company, car dealerships, cable companies, employers, everybody,
other government agencies, all barbers, they don't forget them. They
all use this death Master file, which is available publicly
(14:13):
to check your applications against. And if the government says
that you're dead. It says that on this file, whether
it's right or wrong, you're dead. And that's a whole
lot of problems for you. We're gonna get into those
right after this, and things chock chock stop. So before
(14:58):
we broke, I was talking about that, uh, that scripts
um investigation, and there was an Inspector General's report in
two thousand and eight that kind of pulled back the
curtain on this stuff, and Social Security said, uh, yeah,
that's about right. There's there's a lot of people tens
of thousands that we think are dead and aren't dead,
(15:19):
but they're they're success rates pretty good. Yeah, and he said,
they said, but we're at a ninety nine point five
nine rate of accuracy, which is not too bad for
a government bureaucracy. That's really good. And they said that
of the time, can you can fix it in just
a year, just a hellish year. Yeah, not too bad. Um.
(15:43):
And so they basically admitted two being a government. Uh.
I don't want to knock them too much because it
feels like everyone's always, you know, knocking government work. But
they're basically saying like, yeah, man, it these names are miskeeeds.
Or these numbers are miskeyed. Sometimes happens, so UM. The
(16:06):
thing is that point for one percent error rate, that's
tens of thousands of people every year. There's like two
point seven million people added to this list every year
who die in America, right, so it adds up to
a lot of errors. The thing is that SoC Security
Administration UM, so they take their Death Master file, they
(16:28):
handed over to the National Technical Information Service, and they're
the ones who distributed to all the insurance companies, the
genealogy websites, I think ancestry dot com publishes it UM,
the yeah insurance companies, everybody who wants to do a
background check on you, they all get their their versions
of this from them, the National Technical Information Service. But
(16:52):
part of the agreement to get this from them you
have to pay for it, is that you have to
keep your DMF up to date because if you just
buy one every once in a while UM and the
Social Security Administration finds an error on and updates their file.
If you don't go get the new file, your old
file is still going to have that error. And that's
(17:14):
when it becomes problematic for the people who are listed
as deceased. When they try to go get credit and
it kind of has a tendency to spread once it's
out there. Yeah. So, like I said, sometimes it's being
mis keyed. UM. One I think they said like one
out of every two hundred is just from clerical error. Um.
(17:35):
Sometimes it can be like, um, a family member goes
to report to death and they accidentally make a mistake
where they might end up being on the death list. Yeah.
I don't know how that happens, but it does happen.
There are people like Don Pilger human error, married du
Bord who who apparently married du Board just gave up.
(17:56):
She She's like, my husband can get credit cards still,
I'm just gonna live off of uh. Sometimes you this
one woman named Candice Atkins just accidentally clicked deceased on
a tax return on an electronic filing, and that was it.
Can you imagine now, I can't believe there's not an undo.
That's yeah, I was looking at me that she had submitted.
(18:16):
I guess you could probably have undone it in the moment,
but she didn't realize it and submitted it, right, But
you should still be able to undo that. Um. And
then there are some weird things these uh anomalies that
you dug up. Um. More than false listings made in
two thousand seven were from Illinois. Yep. It sounds like
(18:37):
a hiccup in the system to me. I hiccup in
the system or a super lazy data entry person you think. Yeah. Uh.
More than two million Americans were falsely listed as dying
on the fifte and that was just an internal policy,
is to use the fifte as a default value when
they didn't know at the middle of the month. Sounds
(18:58):
good to me. Um, I guess that was just the
question of not going to the trouble of verifying the
information right so um. And it can happen the other
way too, you can be I think at least six
million dead Americans are labeled as alive, which is a
huge problem because you're you're just your information is out
there ready to be abused by the nefarious. Well, no,
(19:22):
that's the opposite. If you're If you're listed as deceased
but you're still alive, your information is being published and
can be used for identity fraud. If you're actually dead
and not listed. If somebody knows that you're dead and
not listed, they can use your stuff to to perpetrate
fraud against the government. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah,
(19:42):
sixty seven thousand of those people, of those numbers were
used to report three billion dollars in income between two
thousand and six and two thousand eleven. That's a lot
of text return refunds, so fraud. Yeah, So it's a
problem both ways, where either you're dead and you're not
listed on there, or you're not dead and they listed
(20:06):
you anyway. And like I was saying earlier, this once
this information gets out there, because there's so many different
entities getting this list, once it's out there, it stays
out there. It's very tough to go around to everyone
and and get this information changed. Even once you get
it changed with the Social Security Administration, because while it's
(20:27):
a requirement to keep your your list up to date,
if you're a subscriber, there's no enforcement to it. There's
nobody who comes along and says, let me see your list.
Oh it's not up to date. Give me give me
ten dollars that you're fine. There's nobody enforcing it. So
once it's out there, it's very tough to undo. It
takes forever, uh well less than a year on average supposedly.
(20:53):
So there are a lot of horror stories, UM for
what this can due to someone's life. UM. This one
per Sin Rivers. What's the first name, Judy Rivers. Judy
Rivers Rivers Cuomo. UM. Police actually detained Judy Rivers from
using because she used a debit card, her own debit
card at a Walmart at Walmart Plus. She also had
(21:15):
a mountain dew bottle size meth lab in her pocket. Uh.
But in like it seems like all of these cases.
It ranges from stuff like, um, your insurance gets all
messed up, or your maybe disability checks or your Medicaid payments,
or you're trying to get a home loan or trying
(21:35):
to get a credit card, like anything that you can
think of where a social Security number might help. You
can't get a haircut. You should see how long the
hair is on these people. Even if you have cash,
they won't do it. Rivers ended up living out of
her car for six months. Yeah, she had just a
really bad time of it for five years. UM. And
at first she didn't know what was going on because
(21:57):
she was frozen out of her bank accounts. Because this
is something said like like you you can't get future loans,
you can't get future insurance policies, you can't get future credit.
But also the stuff that you already have, your current
bank accounts, all that stuff gets frozen because you're listed
is dead, and so that comes up on the computer
(22:17):
and your account gets frozen. And even when you show
up and say hey, it's me, you know me, the
teller can't do anything about it. The bank can't do
anything about it. It's it's done. And now you've just
been pitted against the system. Yes, and it's like there's
no door you can go knock on and say, hey,
(22:39):
we can clear this up in just a few minutes.
I'm clearly alive. You just click the few little things
you need to click to get my life back. Because
the c US government it's not nearly that easy. So
I guess, said Chuck, that brings up what to do
because there actually are procedures in place, Like we said,
the Social Security Administration says this is not fully accurate.
Anybody gets this list needs to keep updating it as
(23:00):
we update it. I think they released an updated list weekly.
They don't even tell you though, you find out the
hard way almost always. That's a big one. Yeah, it's
not like they say, by the way, we found an error, UM,
because they don't know. They don't know you're alive. Right,
So I actually called the Social Security Administration. I did
because I wanted answers. You didn't go to the office. No,
(23:21):
I didn't know. It was a little laterward. It wasn't cowardless,
it was laziness. So UM I was talking to like
just the the guy who answered, and he knew exactly
what I was talking about, knew all the procedures. But
I asked him. I was like, do you guys ever
uncover this yourselves or is it when people come to
you that you know there's a mistake. He's like, yeah,
when people come to us. So supposedly there's all these
(23:42):
reforms in place and all that. But I think still
for the most part, when an error is uncovered, it's
because you found it out. But even if they do
find it out, yes, what you said is true, they
don't inform the person, which is kind of a violation
of the UM the Privacy Act, I would think. So
from what I understand, it is like anytime your confidential
(24:05):
information is breached and made public, UM, you're supposed to
be informed about that. So the SSA should be sending
out letters, but as far as I know, they do not.
I love this quote in here, um, under the section
on what to do, Like the Social Security Administration is
trying to correct this, and there's a quote from someone
who works there that said that sometimes they'll go out
(24:27):
and see if old Americans are really still alive, and
it it says this, we go to medicare and see
if anyone hasn't been to medicare for three years, and
if they haven't been, we try to go out and
make a phone call to call them and see if
they're you know, still here. And the interviewer was like,
(24:48):
are you drunk? That's what it sounds like. That is
the follow up question. Oh man, So yeah, they I
mean supposedly because of things like that. Scripts Howard News
Service investigation in two eleven sixteen minutes did a big one,
and I think, yeah, for sure, Um, yes, it is
(25:09):
like the truth of what you just have ran through
me like a bolt. Um. But the Social Security Administration
has finally kind of started to be responsive and they
are supposedly undertaking reforms, including having investigators try to root
this out themselves, which ironically they're relying on other government
databases like this guy said medicare to check their records against.
(25:31):
They've stopped taking reports from the state and now only
except um direct reports from people. But that in itself
opened up another problem because they went back and cleared
out the records of like five million Americans whose deaths
have been reported from state databases, so that six million
(25:51):
went to something like eleven million of dead people who
aren't on there. Now, are they actually recommending that you
pull your credit report three times a year? Yes? Really? Yes,
that seems like I don't know, You're not like that
affects your credit. I don't know if that one does. Really.
(26:12):
I know it's free for sure, but I don't know
if it affects your credit or not. But yeah, so
you get access to your the credit reports from the
three big bureaus, right, are you gonna do that? You
have you set up calendar reminders? No, I'm going through
now like once a quarter. I haven't the rest of
your life to make sure you're not listed as dead.
I haven't had time today yet. It seems like if
you're an active consumer in the world, you would find
(26:34):
out very quickly, very quickly. Um, without having to do that. Yeah,
that scripts service. Though, when they found the like thirty
four thousand people who have been listed as dead, they
tried to contact as many of them as they could,
and they said about half of the people were well
aware that they were listed as dead names through nightmare struggles,
but strangely like half had no idea what they were
(26:55):
talking about. So it's like, what kind of life do
you have to live to not be aware of that?
Because you you or I would come up against it
within a week or a month or something. It seems like, yeah,
like there would be something that came up where it's like,
wait a minute, but like it says this information isn't
is incomplete, or it says you're dead or something like that.
We find out pretty or just to go get money
(27:16):
out of a cash machine, it might say sorry, your
pen doesn't work. But I think the recommendation is in
addition to finding out that your listed is dead, there's
also a lot of other stuff that that you can
kind of keep tabs on by looking at your credit
report three times a year, once every four months. Yeah,
and they say the real solution for all of us
(27:37):
would be if every company on the planet doesn't require
Well here's the thing though, they can't legally require your
social Security number two open up or start a telephone
in your name at a home, but they'll ask for it.
And if you refuse to give it, like, you may
not be able to get at all, or you may
just have a really really hard time. Yeah, they can
(27:59):
refuse to do busin with you. And that's the crux
of the problem because that de facto means that you
need to play ball whether you want to give your
Social Security number out or not. Tough, if you want
that internet service or that cable service, or you want
that haircut, you're gonna have to play ball. Yeah, it
was I remember growing up. It was a like I
(28:21):
remember I had a Social Security card and I remember
my mom being like, you gotta put that in your
desk royer. Remember, don't touch it. Ever, if somebody comes
near your your drawer, you shoot them with with this gun. Yeah,
it was crazy. And now it's just like I'd probably
give out my social like twice a month. Right. But
but because of those breaches, because so many people have
(28:45):
your Social Security number now, and because hackers have gotten
really good at getting into things like um, I think
it was Experience or TransUnion who were hacked in two
thousand seventeen. Yeah, that was huge. Um that that was
it was not only I read not only did it
basically just totally erode the public's trust and credit bureaus
(29:06):
to keep our stuff private, like they were the ones
who were supposed to be unhackable. And I think a
hundred and thirty seven million social security numbers made it
out into the wild from that hack. Um that that
that not only eroded trust in the credit bureaus, it
was the beginning of the end for using social security
(29:26):
numbers like we do to authenticate or as identify irs companies.
Some are moving away from that now, right, Yeah, because
they're getting sued and they're getting fines and they just
realized they can't keep this stuff protected. The problem is
no one knows what's next. A lot of people have
talked about like blockchain, but nobody understands blockchain, which, by
the way, we should totally do a blockchain episode. Um,
(29:48):
but everybody's kind of like, it's probably gonna be blockchain,
But first time to go figure out what blockchain is,
and then we'll figure out how to do social security
numbers through blockchain. I'm sure in some offices they're like,
you know, the old barcode on the back of the
neck seems silly, but surewood work. Have you seen Brazil?
Should we take a break? Oh yeah, let's all right.
Let's take another break, and we're gonna talk a little
(30:10):
bit about the rest of the world right after this
and things and chop and chock stop. So chuck, we're
(30:45):
going around the world in eighty days in our ninth
little balloon. Actually, I said, we're going to talk about
the rest of the world. We're only going to talk
about one more place in the world. Hey man, I
got Canada. Oh yeah, the UK. Okay. Basically, anywhere there's
a country with a bureaucracy, in a country where people die,
there's going to be someone erroneously listed as dead. All right,
(31:08):
so let's go to India. In India, it's not always
an accident. Uh, sometimes it's an error. But sometimes, um,
you can do what they call quote killing people on
paper end quote um in order to say their property
is mine, to lay claim to something legally, you can uh,
(31:29):
you can do so especially I mean they don't it's
not legal, but it's something that happens no, you can
bribe an official who will say, yeah, okay, yes, this
person is dead, thank you for reporting their death. Here
is their land or cousin or whoever. Well supposedly in
the um northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Um, it's become
(31:50):
a real problem there. Um. And there was a man
there is a man name Lal Bahari who in nineteen
seventy six at the just twenty two, found out he
was listed as dead and his uncle did his uncle
do this or did his uncle just get the land?
And his uncle's family, his uncle's family, they're the one
that that purposefully listed him as dead just so they
(32:14):
could get the land. Yep. He went to go get
a business loan. He was a loomer and he went
to get a business loan. And to get a business loan,
he needed documentation of his identity. When he went to
go get that, the local records office is like, you're dead.
And it took him seventeen years to undead himself. Yeah.
Fortunately for the world. He had a great sense of
(32:36):
um absurdity of humor like yes, but also like the
humor in absurdy, like he he realized, like this is
so preposterous, and he really used that as motivation to
make huge moves. Yeah, he would answer the phone, um
as dead person, which is uh talkin silent uh. He
(33:00):
would answer the phone like that. He organized the Uttar
Pradesh Reta Singh which is Udra Pradesh Dead People's Association,
And it seems like really brought a lot of like
attention to this through like almost like public absurdist public
demonstrations too. Yeah, like parades of dead people walking around
(33:21):
on the steps of like the government buildings and stuff
like that. And finally he did have his death overturned legally. Um,
did you see whether or not he got his land?
I didn't see that. Actually a great question. I didn't
even think about that, but yeah I I did not.
I don't know, but two people, um, because of his
(33:44):
efforts in that area of India where had their deaths overturned. Yeah,
that was just in one year. Even which why I
think is cool about him as he founded this organization
and got his life back in ninety four, it still
stayed on as the you know, the driving force behind
the Udhapradesh Dead Person's Association and won an ignoble prize
(34:08):
for it. Not bad. We did an episode on that too.
You remember the ignobles man. That was a long time ago. Yep.
So one more thing I we never really actually said
what to do if you end up listed incorrectly is
dead on the death Master file. Start answering the phone
is dead? Chuck, Yeah, exactly, shame the government. Also, the
(34:29):
other thing you're supposed to do first is go in
person to your local Social Security Administration. And by the way,
this is information directly from the s s A to
me to you, because I called them. The guy said,
just bring a driver's license at passport and we'll handle
it from there. And I was like, wait, that's it.
He's like, yeah, you know, the information matches, your picture matches.
(34:51):
That's all you need. And he said, and by handle it,
you'll mean nothing will happen here. That's right, right, And
I go, so do you give the person? So they
give you a letter saying this person's alive, they were
listed as deceased by mistake, give them their credit or whatever. Um,
we love you, so Security Administration And I said, do
you do you give the letter then once they prove
it or um. He's like no, once the file is updated,
(35:14):
then we typically send a letter out. And I was like,
how long is that, you know, And it's weeks easily,
if not months before you're going to get a letter.
But if you find out, the first thing you want
to do go to your local SO security office with
your passport and or your driver's license and say, surprise, yeah,
I saw that one person even had to have a
(35:35):
note from their doctor verifying that they were indeed alive. Weird,
weird life. That must be weird, gentry. So, uh, if
you want to know more about the death Master file,
you can go look it up. It's kind of interesting actually,
as far as bureaucracy goes. And since I said bureaucracy,
it's time for a listener, ma'am, I'm gonna call this um.
(36:00):
This is a follow up on the rape Kits episode,
which we got a lot of amazing and sad stories
from that one. Uh. This is about the money. The
money's because remember on the show we said that you know,
you don't you get to pay for that stuff for treatment? Yeah,
apparently you can get money back, which we've meant to
(36:20):
go back and re record a section and did not.
So this is by means of following up on that.
Hey guys, a longtime listener first time writer finished the
episode on rape kits and realize I could offer some
information that will hopefully bring some peace of mind. I
work as a medical biller for a hospital in the Midwest.
Part of my job is processing the sexual assault claims
(36:40):
that come in at our hospital. We have a program
for those who present to the hospital UH after a
sexual assault. We in partner with the state, cover all
the charges that result from the initially our visit, and
the patient has given a voucher for any relevant follow
up care that they may need over the next three months.
Is awesome. It is, and we realized that a lot
(37:01):
of states do this after we had recorded and published
the show. I'm so glad this person wrote in thould
say it is good to know. We also take steps
to ensure that the patient will never see a bill
or be contacted by our department regards to their visit
to reduce any re traumatization. I'm the point person for
this process here handle all the claims personally. I'm not
(37:23):
sure how many hospitals implement this program, but I hope
this helps you all know that at least here we
do as much as we can to alleviate any unnecessary
burden from our patients during the stressful and sensitive times.
Thanks for all you guys do. You have transformed many
days years spent in a cubicle into opportunities to learn.
Keep doing the great work. And that is from Maria.
(37:44):
Thank you very much. That was amazing. Yeah, Maria, thanks
for doing that job too. That's tough stuff. That was
the antithesis of another email we got who basically said,
regarding your little soapbox about how society should take on
that cost, keep your politics to yourself because I disagree.
I don't know if I saw that one. It was
(38:04):
a bad one and I just wanted to say that
that person is a butt head. Oh no, wait, maybe
I did see that. I couldn't even bring myself to respond.
I think I did, and I did respond. Oh what
did you say? I don't remember. Did you tell him
they were about hecko jump in a lake? There? You? Um? Well,
if you want to get in touch with us, whether
we think you're a butt head or a saint, it
(38:25):
doesn't matter. We still want to hear from you, you
can go on to stuffy sho dot com check out
our social links. You can also send us a good
old fashioned email wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, uh,
spray with perfume, and send it off to stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
(38:46):
a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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