As cybercrime has had a significant impact on tens of millions of our lives, whether we are: in the federal work force and all (yes all) of our personal (the definition of the word ‘personal’ needs to be modified soon) data was compromised (or more accurately, it was stolen, siphoned off, hacked…over days, weeks, months, years – and there is no accurate identification of how or by whom this was done); shoppers at big box stores; participants in health insurance programs; credit card holders (the list goes on and on….) – there remains yet another huge and scary type of theft – you are alive, but you are listed as dead, in the government’s social security death database – or you are dead, but in this not so public file, you have yet to succumb and still linger in the tapestry of ‘the web’. So, via the New Republic – “The Social Security Administration maintains a database containing a record of every U.S. citizen who has died since 1936. What could possibly go wrong? In “The Final File,” contributing editor Paul Ford discusses a few problems with what the government lovingly refers to as the Social Security Death Master File. Explore it for yourself.” Hint – it is replete with errors, many of which can be used to compromise your ‘life.’

• See also via NextGov – Feds Expect to Spend at Least $500 Million on the Next Five Years of Data Breaches