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Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

theguardian.com

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Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#131

Post by tedivm »

ajross wrote: post #73
bachmeier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair? That's like saying "To be fair, some people try to steal money from banks, so it's okay if the ATM sometimes doesn't work."

More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.

I honestly have to ask if you read the article. The only reason this is happening is because of how their system works, not because of any laws. When they detect that someone with a similar, but different, set of identity information dies they reach out to see if that person is the same as the one paying out the pension to. The problem is that once they confirm it is not the person, they keep asking anyways.

This woman had to confirm three times in one month, and then still had her pension stop.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#132

Post by swells34 »

ajross wrote: post #73
bachmeier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair? That's like saying "To be fair, some people try to steal money from banks, so it's okay if the ATM sometimes doesn't work."

More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.

This is a stupid take. Partly because of the use of acronyms for key terms, but also from the "constantly bothering a person is okay because it makes good security easier for us". There are plenty of good solutions that don't require you to heckle old ladies, and regular queries are generally bad security policy anyways. Regular boilerplate check-ins just breed complacency, after the 30th one do you think the person checking in is going to make sure the voice they are talking to on the other side is the right person? People get lax doing busy-work they know could and should be done by a computer. You ever had a job where you had to change passwords every 90 days? Opposite of security.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#133

Post by withinboredom »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #110
withinboredom wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because social security numbers are assigned sequentially by geographic region so if you know someone’s SSN you can get their date of birth or vice versa. This has been false for decades. (early '90s, I think?)

If it stopped being true in 1990, then it remains true for anybody over the age of 34, which is not exactly a small chunk of the population. (Though yes it's a good thing they stopped doing sequential numbers) Edit: https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomizationfaqs.html seems to say that the change was only implemented in 2011, which would mean that even more of the population is unaffected.

My sisters were born after 1990, and they have random ssn's ... especially compared to my brother and I who were born before 1990 (we were all born in the same city). I think the scheme implemented in 2011 is a more random one than the previous scheme or maybe it wasn't implemented everywhere before 2011, and took 20 years to implement (which is also believable).

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#134

Post by carom »

ajross wrote: post #73
bachmeier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair? That's like saying "To be fair, some people try to steal money from banks, so it's okay if the ATM sometimes doesn't work."

More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.

AML and KYC are about funding terrorism, not fraud.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#135

Post by AnthonyMouse »

aetherson wrote: post #109
ajross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.

AML/KYC regulations are, well, as the name suggests, anti-money laundering regulations, they aren't about the customers defrauding the bank. The bank presumably doesn't need to have regulations to incent it to keep its customers from defrauding the bank itself.

Not only that, AML/KYC regulations are extraordinarily ineffective. It appears that some people thought they were a good idea and passed them without ever following up to see if the benefit is worth the cost, and the answer turns out to be a resounding no.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#136

Post by pb7 »

madsbuch wrote: post #117
kthejoker2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you "absolutely" know? It seems trivial to hide a death for a long period of time without a potentially extensive investigation. "They moved abroad."

Well, first and most importantly: Denmark is a high trust society. I am sure that adversaries could exploit the system. But again, that is a non-issue.

In other words, it happens, and you are none the wiser. There will be people that exploit the system in any society -- Danes are not special.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#137

Post by [deleted] »

radiator wrote: post #14

> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.

[deleted]

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#138

Post by rad_gruchalski »

gruez wrote: post #53
wslh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more fair: it is easy to check if they are alive or not. This is not rocket science.

How is it easy? How do you make sure the old person in front of you is really the pensioner and not her 80 year old daughter?

And how’s a photo with a newspaper better?

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#139

Post by grayhatter »

pb7 wrote: post #136
madsbuch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, first and most importantly: Denmark is a high trust society. I am sure that adversaries could exploit the system. But again, that is a non-issue.

In other words, it happens, and you are none the wiser. There will be people that exploit the system in any society -- Danes are not special.

> In other words, it happens, and you are none the wiser.

in other words, you assume... don't forget culture and upbringing is one hell of a drug.

perhaps they are fully aware, and the minimal amount of abuse is the price they're willing to pay to avoid "discrepancies" like the one from the article.

How much do you think live selfies where you have to wink cost? How much effort do you think that is for people? People who have to "ask their children" for help*? Maybe 1% of the cost of the program? if fraud is already less than 1% or even near it. seems like a great deal to me.

*: if you're the kind of person that believes "ask your children for help", so you can prove to us you're not guilty, is reasonable. You're what's wrong with the world, please resign.*

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#140

Post by madsbuch »

pb7 wrote: post #136
madsbuch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, first and most importantly: Denmark is a high trust society. I am sure that adversaries could exploit the system. But again, that is a non-issue.

In other words, it happens, and you are none the wiser. There will be people that exploit the system in any society -- Danes are not special.

My main point was thst it is a non issue.

while social responsibility is one of the main reasons why this does not happen there are several: we have a central people registry of all people eligible to pension. so if a dead person is registered at a hospital, it automatically propagates to all systems (without the issues mentioned in the article).

the amount of registration and control happening to Danish people (with their consent) is inconceivable to the US mentality.

your can not probate an estate without registering a person as deceased.

But I am actually curious on how people steal deceased people's pensions? what happens when it is realized that the person is dead? (eg. by turning 180 years old).

in Denmark all pensions would have been paid out to the pensioners bank account. if somebody withdraw or transferred from that account, they would be caught an prosecuted.

because of this, I guess most people doing this would get caught.

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