Missouri is one of only a few states making digitized death certificates available to the public – free of charge. They have to be 50 years old, but just the same… I saw a note posted by Anne Kruszka that the indexing for 1964 is done – so we can be expecting those shortly. However, I now see that the media has noticed that some of these old death records have social security numbers on them, and raised enough of a fuss that the Missouri Secretary of State’s office is in the process of blacking out the numbers. Following is a teaser from the Kansas City Fox News 4 website.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Secretary of State’s Office is doing an about-face. The office, through spokeswoman Laura Swinford, says it “has already begun the process of redacting social security numbers from death certificates that are at least 50 years old and have been transferred to the State Archives as historic documents.”
When Fox 4 News discovered last fall that old Missouri Death Certificates were available to all online, with SSN’s clearly visible, our investigation revealed the state was alone. Most states limit access to such websites, and redact or hide critical information that might lead to identity theft.
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After seeing our story, Sen. LeVota worked with the Secretary of State’s office, as did the banking industry and those who’d lost loved ones, to persuade it to change its mind. The decision still allows genealogists and researchers to access the documents for legitimate purposes, but will block the critical SSN’s.
“The process is intricate and ongoing—we expect the first group of redacted documents to be available online within weeks,” the office said in its statement.
How can I get a death certificate from 1979 please?
Records under 50 years old not online as are older records. See: http://health.mo.gov/data/vitalrecords/applications.php#fees