Further news on the above from the Hampshire List: We telephoned the Family Records Centre today in our capacity as List Owners of our 2 Hampshire Lists as we felt that an official and definitive reply was essential to clarify the situation and to protect all of us from a potential problem. We received a call back from a Senior Manager who had no knowledge of the site - and so this is certainly not an official arrangement. He was going to speak to GRO Southport and will get back to us. Having already seen a message on another list that GRO at Southport know nothing about 1837online either and were referring to their Management,it would seem to confirm the illegitimate nature of the site. FRC Management have a concern that IF the data is available as stated, it may have been copied without licence. So far,FRC/PRO have granted a licence to FreeBMD to put the GRO index online on the proviso that there was no charge for access and in addition a number of Family History Societies have uploaded much smaller, local segments of the index. Some listers have mentioned a 100 year rule - just to be clear, this does not apply to the GRO index which is already in the public domain to the current date. FreeBMD as we understand it made a voluntary commitment to limit the online data to 1900 so as to avoid problems with living people and also in view of the size of the job in hand.