Third-party obituaries a growing problem: funeral directors [Video]

HALIFAX –

Funeral directors across the country are warning grieving families about a trend of third-party websites republishing obituaries for profit.

Jim Bishop, the funeral director for Bishop’s Funeral Home in Fredericton, said he’s noticed an increase in grieving people who use his services complaining of altered death notices — sometimes with erroneous details — appearing on one such website called Echovita.

Bishop said Echovita’s actions are part of a trend of scraping information from funeral home and newspaper websites and reposting it alongside options to buy flowers and digital candles. He said this data-scraping poses “a moral issue” because it is capitalizing on obituaries without the families’ knowledge or permission.

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“When people click on Google, and they search a person’s name … they don’t always realize they’re not dealing with the funeral home’s website with that …