When Social Security Turns You Into a Zombie

If the Social Security Administration thinks you’re dead, you might wish you were.

People who accidentally wind up on the agency’s Death Master File have seen their bank accounts frozen, credit cards closed, health insurance cut off and benefit payments canceled or even pulled back from checking accounts.

One California man told me his 97-year-old mother nearly had her utilities shut off after her bank froze her account and all her checks bounced, including a birthday gift to a grandchild. A retired professor in Massachusetts wasn’t allowed to get his prescriptions filled and found that all his medical appointments had been canceled, according to a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine. A woman in New Hampshire told CNNMoney couldn’t get her driver’s license renewed for months.

In my latest for the Associated Press, what to do when Social Security thinks you’re dead.