Central Clearinghouse Needed To Sell Dead Identities
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American businesses have a serious problem knowing when to let go of a dead contact. Businesses waste too much money each year marketing to people who are not only dead, but have been dead for several years. I read one story of a parent who lost their child at five years old, then began receiving truckloads of junk mail solicitations thirteen years later as the child’s eighteenth birthday approached. Even our United States military service branches solicited the dead child.
One would think companies would clue in to the death during those thirteen years, but apparently we have a serious information disconnection in America. Apparently this information is not easily obtained from credit reporting agencies or our government’s Social Security Administration. Besides the obviously wasted money and efforts, these solicitations are not well received by grieving parents and survivors. It seems excruciatingly cold to continue mailing cheerful marketing offers to folks that passed away years ago. Currently, the survivors are given the arduous chore of contacting each individual company to request mailing list removals. The practice must be stopped, and it can be easily stopped.
Possibly the best idea would be for a business or government agency to create identity profiles for our deceased. The identity profiles would include all known information about the dead person, such as their full name, address(es), contacts, and death information like certificate and published obituary. The reason to collect all of this information would be to match up as closely as possible to active profiles on marketing lists.
They would essentially be creating a “dead-marketing list” that could be sold to companies at least once or twice each year. Companies purchasing this “dead marketing list” could use it to scrub their own marketing lists of deceased persons. Scrubbing their marketing lists of deceased persons would improve profitability and interactions with other potential customers (the grieving survivors). Plus it just seems the right thing to do.
This ideas seems like something our SSA or credit reporting bureaus should be doing anyway. However, since they apparently are not, perhaps a small business could be started that specializes in creating these data profiles and selling them to big businesses. One who starts this type of business would certainly get many free referrals around the country from newspapers, funeral homes, and in the context of privacy advice.
What do you think?
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Comments
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0 
0 While the idea is meant to cause no harm there is a problem. While this might benefit businesses it has two central issues attached to it: 1) Creating more government bureaucracy and cost; and 2) this information would most certainly be used by criminals for quick identity theft purposes. Presently, I am aware of several individuals that visited the Rose Cemetary here in IF to look for recent burials with the purpose of obtaining personally identifiable information to use. Imagine if we put all this info. on the web and made it even easier for people to hijack our loved one’s identity. In my opinion, this would create alot more grief. If they are going to steal it, I don’t want to make it easy for them to do so.
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0 0 Unsubscribe: I imagine I am naive in my assumptions, what procedures do you think might not work here. I have heard from many folks that Blacker’s is a very bad mass mailer around here. They need to examine their practices better.
Mike: I agree with your points. That’s why I suggested a possible private business initiative to take care of this need.
It seems this function should already be taken care of with existing systems, either SSA or credit bureaus, or both. Perhaps there is already an existing function and companies simply do not follow the procedures?
If the credit bureaus tracked dead identities better, then stealing identities of recently deceased would be a moot point, since the fraudulent applications would not be approved, right?
In fact, applying for credit in a dead person’s name should be a big red flag to track down and arrest the person making the application.
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0 0 While I can sympathize with Unsubscribe for getting unsolicited mail I don’t think you can blame the store. I don’t think there is anything wrong with making a mailing list from existing customers. Naturally they would want to retain customers who had shopped there before. And if you won’t notify them how are they supposed to know that the name and address are no longer appropriate? I’m on Blackers mailing list and I only get a postcard every couple of months or so, and it’s usually for a private sale for preferred customers so I don’t mind.
The ones that really upset me are when I get solicitations and junk mail from companies that I have never done business with, and it’s addressed to my ex-wife at my address. She hasn’t lived here for 7 years. I even get some mail addressed to my prior ex-wife who hasn’t lived here for 14 years! And a lot of those are pre-approved credit cards and the like. Whoever is buying these names on their mailing lists is getting ripped off. However I don’t notify such senders of unsolicited mail. If they are stupid enough to buy a 14 year old name and address from a database they deserve to waste their money.
Back to the original topic, I think some kind of checklist to remove deceased people from mailing lists is a good idea. As Mike pointed out, posting the list online might not be such a good idea. But having a company or clearinghouse with proper security and privacy safeguards handle this job could help it succeed. At least it could be better than it is now.
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0 0 “As Mike pointed out, posting the list online might not be such a good idea. But having a company or clearinghouse with proper security and privacy safeguards handle this job could help it succeed.”
There you go, I think we are all thinking that, the dead list should only be sold through proper marketing lists.
But again, if the credit agencies did their job, stealing identities of dead people would be impossible, wouldn’t it?
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0 0 “Apparently this information is not easily obtained from credit reporting agencies or our government’s Social Security Administration.”
Joe — Maybe I’m foolish, but I think this is a GOOD thing that credit bureaus and the SSA don’t provide this information willingly. I’d rather get junk mail solicitations for a dead relative then find out someone used information from one of these sources to steal a dead relative’s identity.
Vote:
0 0 I think I misspoke there. Rather than
“Apparently this information is not easily obtained from credit reporting agencies or our government’s Social Security Administration.”
I think I should have said
“Apparently this information is not easily obtained by credit reporting agencies or our government’s Social Security Administration.”
As in, the credit bureaus apparently do not learn about deaths and cancel accounts, which it seems they should be doing.
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Vote:
Although I’m not sure of the procedure you suggest, the idea is sound. I still get spam mail from Blackers here in town addressed to me & “Barb” even though Barb’s been gone for 8 years now and we only bought one item from them over 12 years ago. I keep thinking about calling them and trying to get my name dropped, but I guess so far it hasen’t been a priority for me.