[jfengel]

Him, 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]

> 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]

It'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]

If someone is asking for an SSN they’ll be doing a credit report which will show if you’ve died.

[kmoser]

Well, 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]

Estates are issued their own, fresh TIN (taxpayer id). Once established they don't operate under the SSN of the deceased.

[gosub100]

Creditors have access to the death index too.