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 good 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 offered free of charge by Ancestry.com, mines its 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 death records? Death records are often searched as part of genealogical research. Whenever available, death index results reveal birth and death dates, as well as the city reported as the person’s last known address, helping people build their family trees and track more data about members of the family.
Also, include the decedent’s social security number, 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 lookup fields in the database, entering a new hire’s SSN and having a record appear means your new hire 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 grieving 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 death confirmation, 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.