You can access the SSDI at no cost at www.familysearch.org. Their search engine is a bit funky to learn to use, and they frequently update it (which is frustrating for an oldie like me). Ancestry.com is no longer the "go to" site it was 14 years ago when I first began plucking leaves from my family tree and digging up the nuts buried in the roots. It seems to me that ancestry.com is grasping at ways to keep subscribers and lure in new ones. Many things that used to be free on the site no longer are: family trees that members have submitted; new record groups for the first week. And how the National Archives is releasing the 1940 U.S. Census isn't favorable to how ancestry.com does business. The NA will release the the census digitally on April 1st. Familysearch.org is already gearing up to begin the indexing on April 1st. In the past, when census records were available to the public, the paper documents had to be scanned onto microfilm and ancestry.com was the leader in that. A lot of what ancestry.com has can be found at familysearch.org, albeit sometimes familysearch.org only has an index. Another site I found that has a lot in the area of military records is www.fold3.com. It is a subscription site, but it also has a fair number of records that are viewable at no cost. Hope this helps! Beth in Oregon ------- Original Message ------- >From : N Wickam[mailto:ncwick39@yahoo.com] Sent : 1/10/2012 2:56:15 PM To : mobarry@rootsweb.com Cc : Subject : RE: [MOBARRY] SSDI on Rootsweb So now  Rootswebs social security indexes are no longer free. They have removed them & to access them you need a membership to Ancestry.com. How great is this for Ancestry? 1 SSDI: 2011-12-21 As we said on the http://ssdi.rootsweb.com landing page, the sensitive nature of the information can no longer be offered for free on our site. We have permanently and completely removed the index as it is the only way to prevent the sensitive information from being abused by using it from non- genealogical research.  RootsWeb remains a free website. We aren't charging for anything on RootsWeb. While we have removed our copy of the SSDI we are also informing visitors that Ancestry.com still has their copy. You can use the filtered version on Ancestry.com but will need a paid membership with them. If you need more information than what is available on Ancestry.com you will need to go to the US Social Security Administration as they are the originators or use one of the many other genealogy sites that have a free SSDI.     ________________________________ The list-admin is Donna Cooper, address - (thedonnacooper@gmail.com) ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to MOBARRY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message