Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

While humorous (getting a death certificate for someone who isn't really dead) the money is in the virtual births. I don't doubt for a minute there are entrepreneurs who use that to create new identities for people or fake dependents (welfare fraud).

View on HN

It's less than humorous. Once bogus data declaring you dead works its way into the system, credit cards get shut off, accounts get closed, and you're liable to have serious problems with your bank.

Your correct, it isn't funny, but when the Social Security administration decided my wife's uncle was already dead and he needed to pay back benefits they sent, she had them talk to him on the phone, where they tried to explain to them that because he was dead he needed to payback excess benefits.

This is what happens when computer screens turn humans into robots. We need more academic studies of "irregular operations", the term used by the airline industry for any event where unpredictable real-world events intrude on planned schedules. At such times, senior human customer service agents are empowered to override computer models, with later reconciliation.

The field is called "Operations Research". I had the pleasure of meeting Dr Cook in the speaker lounge right before he gave this keynote at Velocity 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S0k12uZR14

Thank you for the video. Very informative!

Even better: You can create a death certificate for yourself, and create a birth certificate for yourself under a different name a few decades ago.

New identity, very cheaply and easily.

no the real money is fake addresses...in that a postal address is a lazy format not verified until something is sent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com