One of the major purposes of the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is to prevent fraud so that no one can steal the identity of a dead person, and take out a credit card or a bank loan in a dead person's name.
All credit agencies and most all banks, credit unions, and others in the financial industry who make loans or issue credit cards subscribe to the SSDI. As soon as the Social Security Administration releases an update, these subscribers immediately load the Social Security Numbers of deceased individuals into their databases. As a result, anyone who applies for a loan or a credit card by using that number is IMMEDIATELY flagged as POSSIBLE FRAUD and the application is kicked out for a human to review.
If these agencies didn't have often-updated lists of now defunct Social Security Numbers, the amount of fraud would skyrocket immediately.
Information is power. The more information available to the public, the harder it is for rip-off artists to perform their scams.
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