Summary
IfTheyDie focuses on public obituary and memorial signals first. Official vital records are important for verification, but they are not generally available as a broad public real-time feed.
Current source categories
- Online obituary aggregators and funeral-home memorial pages.
- Local newspaper obituary pages and public memorial notices where available.
- Cemetery and memorial records for historical or delayed confirmation.
- Budgeted external search results reviewed by an admin before broader use.
Official records
Official certificates are maintained by state and local vital records offices. They are authoritative, but access, cost, and public-record timing vary. IfTheyDie should not imply official-record coverage unless a specific authorized integration exists.
What we do not claim
We do not claim universal death coverage, real-time access to every state death record, or guaranteed cause-of-death visibility. Public obituary monitoring is useful, but incomplete.
Sources
Related guides
Coverage and Limitations
What IfTheyDie can monitor today, where coverage can miss deaths, and how to interpret confidence scores.
Death Records vs. Obituaries
Understand the difference between official death records, death certificates, obituaries, cemetery records, and death indexes.
Obituary Monitoring Service
How obituary monitoring works, when it is useful, and why source coverage and false-positive review matter.