Rootsweb has removed the Social Security Death Index from its site "due to sensitivities around the information in this database." [?] SSDI is available on ancestry.com and some free sites, but some users say that the free sites are less up to date or the search engines are not as good. SSDI is available on the NEHGS site http://www.americanancestors.org under "Popular Databases." I did a quick test with the surname Hixson and the year 2011. The NEHGS site gave five results, all with death dates in January. Ancestry.com gave many more results, with death dates as recent as November. So maybe NEHGS's SSDI is updated less often (annually?). It would be nice if the NEHGS site told users the date of its SSDI. But if that is the only difference, it should be OK for users who are not in a big hurry. I logged out of the NEHGS site and was still able to get the same five results, so apparently the SSDI is open to nonmembers. Can anyone comment on the comparative effectiveness of the NEHGS vs. ancestry.com search engine, etc.?