Sunday, November 27, 2022

Ancestry U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index - App vs Website

The information presented by Ancestry.com for the U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index is different depending upon whether you view it on a web browser, or their phone app.

Here is what I see on a web browser (With name and SSN info removed. The individual is a second cousin of a grandparent. I am not in contact with their descendants.)

____ in the U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index 

Name:
Gender:Female
Race:White
Birth Date:26 Nov 1915
Birth Place:St Louis, Missouri
Death Date:14 May 1986
Father:
Mother:
SSN:
Notes:Nov 1936: Name listed as ________; Oct 1943: Name listed as _____; : Name listed as _______; 24 Mar 1988: Name listed as _______

Here is what I see on my iPhone app for the exact same record:

U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index 

Name:
Gender: Female
Birth Date: 26 Nov 1915
Birth Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Death Date: 14 May 1986
Father:
Mother:

As you can see there are a handful of fields that are completely left off of the record on the app. 
  • Race
  • SSN
  • Notes
There is absolutely no indication on the app that they have expurgated this information from the record. Some sort of warning would be nice - informing the researcher they need to use a web browser to view all available information. (Or even better, include all of the information on the app.)

In this case, the Notes information is critical. This is an index, and transcription errors can occur easily. While there is no reason to call into question the death date when viewed on the app, when viewed on the browser, the Notes section clearly indicates something is fishy. Why is a change in how the name is listed recorded two years after the supposed death?

The tombstone and obituary for this individual indicate that the date of death was indeed in March of 1988. I fully suspect that something did occur in May of 1986. Possibly the change in name listing that has no date in the notes. And this somehow got recorded as the death date in the indexing. However, without having the additional records to refer to, if I relied solely on the information presented on the app, I would enter the wrong information into my tree, without questioning it at all.

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