It would be great if banks and other financial institutions had to follow libel laws. Why isn't a bank stating that you're dead when you're clearly not a clear case of libel?
In a similar manner, most cases of what is called "identity theft" are really just bank libel: a bank mistaking you for someone else and making false statements about your credit worthiness or reassigning your assets.
> Automation is not a good thing when it comes to credit reporting<p>I only agree in the sense that there are no good things when it comes to consumer credit reporting in the United States. This is just an example of systemic problems that can and should be solved by increased automation and removing humans from the process.<p>There's not a ton of reasons that setting isDead = false in a table somewhere shouldn't "just work" other than too much human intervention in the processes of evaluating credit, reporting it to stake holders, and keeping information in sync.
On the subject of people being declared dead, there's a good defcon talk about abusing how easy it is to declare someone dead. "Chris Rock - I Will Kill You" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs</a>
This reminds me of an old (apocryphal?) story about someone who ended up mailing back a bunch of misaddressed email with "DECEASED" on it and causing major issues for someone. I cannot remember where I read this first.
I like how the final suggestion is to hire an attorney... going to be hard to do that with all your credit and bank accounts frozen.<p>Sounds a lot like the ISP help that tells you to fill out a form online if your internet is out...
India has a zombie party.<p>Apparently corruption is so bad you bribe a government official get someone declared dead.<p>There is no recourse for coming back to life.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh_Association_of_Dead_People" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh_Association_of...</a><p>On a more local front, a friends social security card lists him as female.
After a months effort he finally gave up on correcting it.<p>Heck my owns wife’s birthday is wrong. By a few days. We inquired about it and
were told to just go with it. Multiple years of effort would be required to fix it.
My somewhat spotty knowledge of law in an alternate universe spun from merging film noir and the Marx brothers tells me that a dead man can't be convicted of bank robbery.