The National Technical Information Service (NTIS), an agency of the US Department of Commerce, has announced that it has been named the authorised official distributor of the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Death Master File (DMF). The DMF is used by leading government, financial, investigative, credit reporting organisation, medical research, and other industries to verify identity as well as prevent fraud in compliance with the USA Patriot Act. To assist in this effort, NTIS and SSA are working together to offer the Death Master File more frequently, with fewer delays and in different formats.
By methodically running financial, credit, payment and other applications against the Death Master File, the financial community, insurance companies, security firms and state and local governments are better able to identify and prevent identity fraud. The USA Patriot Act requires an effort to verify the identity of customers, including procedures to verify customer identity and maintaining records of information used to verify identity. A user may now access an online search application or maintain a raw data version of the file. The online service is updated weekly and the weekly and monthly updates are offered electronically via https, reducing handling and production time.
The Death Master File in an online search application or as raw data on CD is also important for identification verification other than for preventing fraud. Medical researchers, hospitals, oncology programmes all need to track former patients and study subjects. Investigative firms use the data to identify persons, or the death of persons, in the course of their investigations. Pension funds, insurance organisations, Federal, State and Local governments and others responsible for payments to recipients/retirees all need to know if they might be sending cheques to deceased persons.
The Death Master File contains over 86 million records of deaths that have been reported to SSA. Access to the DMF is available from NTIS online and in other formats including DVD.
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