Robin wrote .... "However there is great concern about personation, identity theft and money laundering ... So the decision in Scotland that online BMD's indexes are restricted is apparently to make it less easy for those with criminal intent to get this information on living people .... Personal visitors to the search rooms in Edinburgh will all be identified so they can access all the indeces. Curiously the English and Welsh BMD indexes are available online almost up to the present." The fact that the English & Welsh indexes are available online right up to 2003 shows that it can be done. Any professional crook who wants to 'steal' other people's identity (although someone born 90 years ago seems to me, to be rather an unlikely sort of target) is bound to be adept at producing false identification, and will be just the sort of person who will make the effort to go to Edinburgh to use the system at New Register House. It is we poor researchers who can't all get to Edinburgh every day, who thus suffer from these online restrictions, while any would be crooks can happily exploit the anomalies in the system to their own advantage. I don't believe that restricting access to the more recent online records, inhibits the professional fraudsters in any way, but it does spoil things for genuine researchers. Duncan, Dundee