Deceased Alert

Identity theft is a huge problem. One company involved in protection from ID theft has presented statistics from the Harris Poll in 2018 stating that 60 million Americans have been victims of ID theft and 15 million consumers were victims in 2017 alone. The reality of ID theft is less like the comedy Identity Thief with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman and closer to the cyber nightmare of The Net with Sandra Bullock.

A deceased alert is one step that families can take to prevent a recently departed loved one from being resurrected in digital databases and credit agencies, where fraud is most often committed, and dead people suddenly have been reborn as illegal aliens, drug dealers, or any other people who need to keep their true identities hidden. By issuing a deceased alert to the credit reporting agencies, a family ensures that ID thieves will find it difficult to open new accounts in the deceased’s name, and can possibly become a bait and switch tool for law enforcement.