Beware! Social Security Is Using Docutector!

     From a contracting notice posted by the Social Security Administration:

This is ... notification of the Social Security Administration's (SSA) intent to issue, on a sole-source basis, a firm fixed-price contract to D.R. Myers Distributing Co., Inc. dba Driver's License Guide Company, to renew an electronic resource subscription entitled Docutector.

Docutector is an online document forgery detection database. SSA's Office of Media Management (OMM) will use the Docutector subscription as a visual standard to inspect documents submitted by claimants to detect and investigate fraud.

     I think the last dubious document case I saw at Social Security was a family Bible used to prove date of birth. The questionable entry was written by a ballpoint pen supposedly as a contemporaneous  recording of a birth that happened well before ballpoint pens were invented. Most of my readers have no experience with date of birth determinations, much less the concept of using a family Bible to prove date of birth. To explain, states weren't requiring birth certificates until about 100 years ago. Even after birth certificates were required, for some years there were still plenty of home births where no birth certificate was issued. School records, insurance records, census records and entries in family Bibles were used in these cases to prove date of birth for Social Security purposes. Laboriously gathering documents to make a date of birth determination used to be a significant part of what the Social Security Administration did. That's pretty rare these days, except for some immigrants, because all those folks who lacked birth certificates are now on Social Security benefits or deceased. My point is that fraudulent documents are quite uncommon at Social Security these days.