[drablyechoes]

The SSN of someone "off the grid" would actually be perfect for doing what is called synthetic identity fraud. If a given SSN has no credit history, you can make up a fictitious person and apply for a credit card with it. The application is probably declined, but a record of this SSN associated to a completely fictitious identity now exists in the credit reporting agencies databases, which makes it more likely that a future credit application will be approved.

If there is no other identity using this SSN, then the likelihood of the fraudulent activity being dectected is low.

This is why SSNs belonging to elderly people, children/teenagers, and the recently deceased are of relatively higher value for a lot of people out there doing identity fraud.

[jstarfish]

Stealing someone else's unused SSN is not synthetic identity creation, it's just fraud. There is a living person associated with that SSN, even if they are off the grid.

Synthetic identity fraud involves you making a bunch of inquiries with completely fake SSNs and squatting on them for a few years, maybe bringing them out of cold storage every so often to make a few more inquiries to keep them on the credit-building radar before you ultimately qualify for actual lines of credit and do a bust-out. There is no oblivious meatbag being used as a patsy-- the identities are completely fake, which is what makes them synthetic.

[drablyechoes]

There is more than one way to construct a synthetic identity, but in most cases that I've been aware of, a stolen SSN is used to construct the totally fake identity.

Using a completely fake SSN instead of a stolen SSN is what distinguishes "synthetic identity theft" from "synthetic identity fraud".

The identities in both cases are completely fake, but only in the identity theft case is the synthetic identity backstopped by a legitimate SSN that belongs to a real person somewhere. If that real person is a child or "off the grid", then the CRAs have no idea who the real person is and their SSN is ripe for creating a synthetic identity that will probably go undetected for years.