Monday, May 24, 2010

Online Services to Find Family

There are many online websites that will give you access to all sorts of records, including social security records. Ancestry.com is one of the sites that does just this. The problem with using this site is that you sign up for a monthly or yearly fee and then may forget to cancel it. You have to keep track of how long you are on the site and when you are finished, be sure to cancel, unless you plan on using this site for more information. They have access to all sorts of records, not just social security records. In addition to social security records, which are a great help, they have access to the following:

Birth records
Death certificates
Military records
Immigration records
Marriage certificates
Social security information

Yes, you can get all this information for free - it is all of public record and available to the public who wants to look for it. But this site cuts to the chase and saves you an inordinate amount of time in finding the information that you are looking for. Instead of spending weeks to get records from social security, you can get it in a matter of seconds when you use an online website. While you have to pay a fee for the online records, you still have to pay a fee to get anything copied at the county recorder’s office or social security office.

While social security is your first step, it is only one of many. Social security records will tell you when a person was born and when they died, as well as the county in which they last lived. That’s it. Finding your long lost relatives is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. You have to go from record to another in obtaining information. So, yes, theoretically, you can find out information through the regular channels without having to pay a fee for the use of an online website, but it will take you a long time. If you want to find out the information quicker, you should use an online site.

No comments:

Post a Comment