World's Largest Obituary Database Loses Millions of Entries

About Legacy.com

Legacy.com is a platform where users can search through what is claimed to be "the world's largest obituary database." Since its inception in 1998, the site has amassed close to 50 million entries. The website caters to more than 70% of all U.S. deaths and hosts obituaries for over three-quarters of the 100 largest newspapers in the U.S. by circulation. It boasts more than 30 million unique visitors per month, making it one of the top 40 most visited websites globally. Although the site currently does not have an "About Us" page, previous versions from 2019 indicate that it is a top-50 website in the U.S., attracting more unique monthly visitors than Wikipedia, Netflix, or LinkedIn. Legacy.com also claims to provide a "permanent, shareable space" for users to commemorate their loved ones, partnering with over 5000 funeral homes, newspapers, and advertisers.

Recent Findings Raise Questions

Despite Legacy.com's claim of offering a "permanent" commemoration space, recent findings by a diligent researcher have raised some intriguing questions.

Key Findings

Between June 6th and June 7th, 2024, approximately 2.3 million obituaries vanished from Legacy.com's running tally, which has been maintained since 1998. This represents a deletion of about 5% of the total entries. Further, at least 200,000 obituaries disappeared from the tally between August and September 2024. Even before June 2024, tens of thousands of additional obituaries were removed from the tally. The researcher, who wishes to remain anonymous, has provided a detailed account of the methods used to obtain these numbers.

Why Were the Obituaries Deleted?

Before speculating on the reasons for the large-scale removal of records from the site's tally, Legacy.com was contacted for an explanation. Stephen Segal, Senior Director of Content Development, responded by stating that the total number of obituary records on Legacy.com varies as they maintain their database in routine compliance with the technical and contractual requirements of their partnerships.

Further Inquiry

Further questions were sent to Mr. Segal, asking for clarification on the "technical and contractual requirements" that might necessitate such massive removals of entries in a short period. However, Mr. Segal responded by saying that "Legacy has nothing further to add at this time beyond what we shared initially."

Possible Reasons for the Deletions

Several theories have been proposed to explain the large-scale deletions from Legacy.com's obituary tally.

Routine Compliance

As suggested by Mr. Segal, the deletions could be part of "routine compliance" involving "technical and contractual requirements" leading to fluctuating numbers of records on the site. However, given the sudden and large-scale nature of the deletions, this seems unlikely.

Removing Covid Vaccine-Related Deaths

Another theory is that the records of people who might have died as a result of receiving the Covid mRNA vaccines could be being deleted. However, the researcher found that the deletions do not seem to be limited to deaths known or suspected to be related to the vaccines.

Reducing the Overall Death Count

A third theory is that large numbers of obituary records are being deleted simply to lower the overall death count. This explanation seems the most plausible, given the researcher's findings.

Additional Research Needed

To determine which specific obituaries were removed from Legacy.com, further exploration of the Wayback Machine is required.

Interesting Findings

A Google search for Legacy.com/obituaries leads to an error page. Searching for this URL on the Wayback Machine shows a calendar with many blue circles indicating snapshots, but all of them lead to blank white pages. An inquiry about this has been submitted to the Internet Archive, and a response is awaited.

Bottom Line

The deletion of millions of entries from the world's largest obituary database is a puzzling event that raises many questions. The reasons behind these deletions remain unclear, and further investigation is needed to shed light on this mystery. What are your thoughts on this matter? Feel free to share this article with your friends and spark a discussion. Don't forget to sign up for the Daily Briefing, which is available every day at 6pm.