National Burial Index for England and Wales Online

The National Burial Index (NBI) for England and Wales is is an index to help family historians find burial records. It is an ongoing project devised and orchestrated by the Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS). The burial records date back to 1538, the year that Henry VIII was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, up to 1837, the date when civil registration began.

These records come from different types of sources: parish registers, bishop’s transcripts (the copies of the original registers made each year for the bishop of the diocese in which they are situated), earlier transcripts or printed registers. Please note that the NBI for England and Wales does not contain memorial inscription records (MIs).

Note that this is an index; the results you are presented with will not contain images at the present time.

The records that have been transcribed to date are now available (for a fee) at FindMyPast.com at http://www.findmypast.com/national-burial-index-search-start.action?redef=0.

Comments

[Carleen Foster]

Per the Find My Past web site the index goes to 2005 though the names I checked were almost identical to the 2nd edition of the National Burial Index available on CD Rom which was issued in 2004. In the case of the two family names I compared there was a difference of one name on each. (A name found on the CD was not found on the web site in each case.) It should be noted that the Index is not complete even to 1837 as all parishes have not been recorded. However it is a marvelous tool and great that it is now available on the Internet.

[David]

This is a relaunch of old data following the transfer of the data from Family History On Line to Find My Past. The data has been available for several years, on CD and on FHOL.

[Sandy Coulter]

I tried to access this site this morning after reading the article and immediately my security software rejected it with this message: http://scanner2.malware-scan. I wonder if anyone else has encountered this. Interestingly, the other day I received a newsletter from KindredKonnections with a link to several articles I wanted to read and when I clicked on their links I got a different rejection message from the security software. I emailed the newsletter sender and told her what happened, and the next day received a response thanking me for letting her know. She said they reworked their access and this did work so that I was able to get in afterward with no problem.

[Nancy]

The link in this article directs the user to an adware, malware, or spyware website.

My recommendation would be to DELETE this link immediately as something is still wrong with it!

[Dino (All Dino, All the Time)]

Nancy,

The link works fine with my PC. It takes me right to the search page on FindMyPast.com.

Maybe you've go something else going on with your computer. Or maybe your security software is being a little too aggressive?

[Dino (All Dino, All the Time)]

Nancy,

The link works fine with my PC. It takes me right to the search page on FindMyPast.com.

Maybe you've go something else going on with your computer. Or maybe your security software is being a little too aggressive?

[Dick Eastman]

99% of the time when some piece of software that is designed to "protect" you from things like this, the problem is in the protection software. When an anti-spam or anti-virus or anti-phishing piece of software makes a mistake, it is called a "false positive." Sadly, such things are very common.

In this case, I'd seek a second opinion. I suspect the malware scan is overly aggressive and issuing false positives.

- Dick Eastman

[theKiwi]

At some stage this morning this page certainly seemed to be infected - the first time I loaded that page using Safari 3 on Mac OS X I got several new screens (I've removed the http:// from them which should hopefully prevent them becoming links in this post...

traveltray.com/statsg.php?campaign=threw6ar&u=1196431909066.89

then

blessedads.com/?cmpid=threw6ar

then

performanceoptimizer.com/.landing/index.php?4656530f4d0b40534f07034566474a6f540b6f500646560a43480b5a5b0a551f5f571453490c0f071e54125804031f535c5801

which was offering a download. This is now not the case.

My guess is that for a while this site was somehow infected, but has now been dis-infected.

Roger

[JINNY COLLINS]

I had the same result as Roger. I deleted and got out of there, fast!

[Joan Armistead]

I had the same result yesterday as Roger and Jinny.

[Caroline Gurney]

As David says, the NBI has been online for some time on the Federation of Family History Societies' website which is called Family History Online: www.familyhistoryonline.net . On the Family History Online site it costs 5p to view the details of an entry and the minimum spend is £5 which lasts 6 months. On Find My Past it costs 11.5p to view an entry and the minimum spend is £6.95 which lasts 3 months. The Family History Online website will remain online until all data has been transferred to Find My Past (sometime in the first half of 2008) when remaining credit will be transferred to Find My Past. I therefore suggest people save money by using the Family History Online site to access the NBI for the time being. One other advantage is that a search on Family History Online also covers burial and monumental inscription databases which are not in the NBI. As a result, a search on Family History Online for one of my less common surnames turned up 50 burial entries as opposed to 40 on Find My Past. Finally, I see that the Oxfordshire data in the NBI is soon to be withdrawn from online access - presumably because the Oxfordshire Family History Society objects to its commercial use by Find My Past - so search quickly if you have Oxfordshire ancestors.

[Sandy Coulter]

I tried to access the site tonight, and I did not get a security message this time. Perhaps it has been fixed.

[Chris]

I'd like to echo Catherine Gurney's comments. The FFHS Family History Online service is cheaper and in a quick test more accurately indexed. For example my grandmother is in the FHO version of NBI for Somerset but not in the FindMyPast version.

[Derek Cuthbert]

If you go to http://www.familyhistoryonline.net/ and either register or sign in you'll be able to see the coverage of the NBI. There are chunks of the UK that are not covered as the local FHS deceided not to participate in the project.

[Paul Yates]

Findmypast.com customer announcement.

We noticed a couple of days ago that a number of our customers were experiencing issues with a potential virus when visiting our website. We investigated the issue immediately as we were of course very concerned. The issue was caused by a rogue flash advert which was being delivered by our advertising agency. This advert has now been removed and the site is completely clean once again. Below you will see an explanation we received from double click (online advertising distributor), this issue would have affected a number of sites displaying adverts. We would like to apologies to any of you that experienced this issue and assure you we will be doing everything possible to ensure this does not happen in the future.

Response from Double click:

Over the last few weeks, several website publishers using a variety of platforms have inadvertently served ads that contain a malware executable named DriveCleaner or MalwareAlarm. DriveCleaner and MalwareAlarm operate by installing on a consumer’s computer and popping up a window that offers to clean that computer of spyware in exchange for money.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

The ads that contain DriveCleaner or MalwareAlarm appear to have originated from small "agencies". These agencies go by a variety of names, and generally claim to be based in Europe or Canada. It is believed that these agencies typically: (1) sign direct sales deals with web publishers for the serving of ads (usually rich media ads, and even ads that appear to be on behalf of established brands), (2) pay publishers up-front via credit card rather than through a formal invoice process and (3) provide the main creatives to publishers to host. The brand advertisers in question do not seem to be associated with this practice or even to be aware that their brands are being used for this purpose.

While the creatives hosted by the publishers have not contained malware, they have made external calls for files that download the DriveCleaner or MalwareAlarm malware onto consumers’ desktops.

The distributions described in this letter do not infect your network with a virus or malware; rather, it is the consumer’s computer that is infected.

Given the deceptive nature of these enterprises, the mechanism of delivery may change over time. For this reason, it is imperative that you engage in careful QA and monitoring of creatives that you accept from agencies, advertisers, ad networks and ad exchanges, particularly those with which you do not have long-term relationships.

WHAT DOUBLECLICK HAS DONE AND IS DOING

DoubleClick has implemented a security monitoring system that scans external rich media SWF files (the files that are currently believed to download DriveCleaner and MalwareAlarm) for known malware, and we are developing a system to scan other external files for known malware. The implemented system is active on DART for Publishers, DART for Advertisers and DoubleClick Advertising Exchange. If we detect malware in a creative, or in a file called by a creative, we will disable the ad and try to notify you as soon as practicable. Although malware distributors can be expected to adapt to security measures that are put in place, DoubleClick will monitor their activities in order to respond to new threats that appear.

Kind regards,
Paul Yates (Head of Product & Services)