Notice to the Profession: BAO reminds licensees to alert families about copied obituaries and funeral notices

It’s important that grieving families know about the persistent issue of copied or ‘pirated’ death notices and obituaries.

The Bereavement Authority of Ontario (BAO) is asking you, as licensed professionals, to share this information with people making funeral or other bereavement care arrangements with you.

There are companies continuing to make money by reposting obituaries without the permission, or even knowledge of, the grieving families and funeral homes which originally posted them.

These companies often copy, paste, and sometimes rewrite obituaries originally posted in newspapers and funeral home websites. The companies then use the ‘pirated’ postings to offer to sell candles, plant a tree, and/or sell other in-memoriam gifts – which people mistakenly think are on behalf of the families.

It’s sadly nothing new and adds stress to families mourning the loss of a loved one. The BAO alerts the public a few times a year about such companies that are ‘pirating’ or copying obituaries to draw traffic to their websites to sell memorial items.

The BAO does not regulate these non-licensed businesses operating commercial websites. For this reason, we encourage our licensed operators to bring this issue to the attention of families.

Advice to families

To help consumers, here’s some advice you can share:

• There is a risk that in posting a death notice or obituary (on a website of a funeral establishment or local newspaper) that a company could copy and paste the information for their own profit;
• Copying death notices and reposting them is not done by licensed professionals, like you;
• Families can ask the company to remove the copied obituaries and death notices from their websites. (In most cases they have removed them following a request from families of the deceased.)
• Verify any obituaries and death notices before buying anything.

Verify

People can verify online obituaries and death notices by:

• Only trusting death notices and obituaries posted on BAO-licensed funeral establishment websites. Tell consumers that BAO-licensed businesses display the ‘Licensed by the BAO’ badge at the bottom of their homepages;  
• Checking the name of the business that has posted the obituary/death notice on the BAO’s Public Register, which lists all licensed businesses and individuals. (The Public Register is also linked on our public website, TheBAO.ca);
• Calling your establishment or other BAO-licensed businesses in the area if the family is unsure; or,
• Emailing the BAO at Licensing@TheBAO.ca.

Public knowledge is the best defence for consumers.

For several years the BAO has sounded the alarm on this issue. We have published Notices to the Consumer by the Registrar, alerted the public in our social media feed as recently as Jan. 14, and provided information in many news articles, including this informative one on Jan. 16 by CTV News.

Your help in alerting people would help inform grieving families.

Thank you for your professionalism.