Courtney, I think it is something like 4.2 million records that will be deleted from the SSDI. As I understood it, the reasoning has to do with the new process they will use for death verification. Apparently state issued death records are not sufficient proof and supposedly the 4.2 million records were based on state death records. If you get Dick Eastman's newsletter you could have read it there. http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2011/11/important-changes-made-to-the-public-death-master-file-dmf-and-the-social-security-death-index-ssdi.html Linda in Costa Rica Monroe County, New York Genealogy http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~monroenys Monroe County, New York History http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~monroenys -----Original Message----- From: Courtney Sent: Sunday, 06 November, 2011 7:26 PM To: ftm-tech@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [FTM-TECH] Ancestry down for Maintenance? It's possible there is a connection to the SSDI I read somewhere (I can't remember where) that the government is "withdrawing" at least part of the listings. As I recall, it would be the newer ones, but I'm not sure about what dates. I assume this would mean Ancestry has to remove some of the listings. With the way they have everything linked, I would think that would be a complicated problem for them. Courtney sitnah@cox.net ********************************** List information page http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/FTM-TECH.html Online Support for Family Tree Maker Version 16 and earlier http://pastftm.custhelp.com/ Version 2008 - 2011 http://ftm.custhelp.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FTM-TECH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message