Our Voices Unite

According to a recent article on CemetarySpot, a case of identity theft was brought to court and the source of the alleged criminal’s information was the social security death index public records files on rootsweb.  Apparently this person gathered social security numbers of recently deceased and using that and other vital info, was able to convince several credit card companies to issue credit in the name of the deceased and in some cases to add the person on as an authorized user.

While I personally don’t think it is right to use the SSDI to canvas for  family members of those recently past for the purpose of selling space online for memorial pages or other services, this is also a trend that has been emerging lately.

Having recently lost my mother, I find this appalling and as a genealogist, I fear that we will soon be prevented from doing legitimate research using the SSDI.  If you  discover such abuses the only thing you can do for now is to post a comment on your blog, or if you don’t have a blog, I will invite you to share what you discover as a comment to this posting.

We need to preserve the technological databases that have been so vital to our genealogy research in recent years and we should also advocate the free access to public records through the web without fear of a loved one’s information being stolen and used for illicit purposes.