Searching for vital records, such as births and marriages, is quite easy today thanks to the Internet. Public records are freely searchable, including Social Security death records. Although there are some places where you will have to pay to download public death records, there are also a number of free resources available.
The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is the largest public database of death records available online and can be found at ssdi.rootsweb.com This database, sponsored and provided free of charge by Ancestry.com, extracts your data from the Social Security Death Master File compiled by the US Social Security Administration. This Death Master File contains over 65 million records. However, it is not a complete list of deaths in the United States as not all deaths have been reported to the Social Security Administration, particularly those deaths prior to the creation of the Social Security Administration in 1935 and those that are very recent.
Why would anyone want to search for death records? Death records are often searched as part of genealogical research. Where available, death index results reveal dates of birth and death, as well as the city reported as the person’s last known address, helping people build their family trees and track more data about the individuals. members of the family.
In addition, the decedent’s social security number is included, if available. This is of enormous value to insurance companies, credit companies, Homeland Security and the like. If someone is dead, they obviously shouldn’t be using their social security number anymore! So, since the social security number is one of the search fields in the database, entering a new employee’s SSN and having a record come up means that your new employee may very well not be who they say they are… and it is time for you to make some decisions, particularly since it is now illegal to knowingly hire illegal aliens.
While fraud prevention is one use, stopping payments, such as pension payments, might not be the first thing a bereaved family thinks of doing. Periodic verification of the Social Security Death Master File, which is updated weekly, by the appropriate agencies and organizations allows such payments to be properly stopped, saving taxpayers money.
As you can see, accessing Social Security death records is now easy and free. If you need more than a confirmation of death, date of death, or other basic information, you may need to request a copy of the death certificate or death certificate. There is a completely different process. To do this, you will need to contact the records department in the county where the person died or you will need to obtain the services of an online death records provider.
