From Biometric Update.com:
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is remaking itself around a digital identity system that tens of millions of its beneficiaries cannot use – while simultaneously dismantling the in-person safety valve that has long allowed people to navigate the system when digital verification fails. …
But that digital system is built on identity-proofing mechanisms that millions of Social Security beneficiaries cannot satisfy. To access many of SSA’s online services – including creating a my Social Security account, resetting credentials, obtaining replacement documents, checking claims, or managing benefits – individuals must authenticate their identity using commercial data sources.
Those identity checks can include credit histories, mobile carrier records, address histories, and financial account data. They generate “soft inquiries” on credit files and hinge on the existence of a stable and verifiable financial footprint.
The problem is straightforward: millions of Social Security beneficiaries do not have the data these systems require. …
Numerous disability claimants operate with inconsistent documentation due to frequent address changes, medical crises, or disruptions tied to long periods out of the workforce. For these beneficiaries, digital identity verification is not simply difficult. It is often impossible.
Under SSA’s new operational model, that impossibility now carries far-reaching consequences. When digital verification fails, the fallback is a field office – but the agency is cutting field office traffic by 50 percent and reducing staffing across local offices. …
This dynamic recasts SSA’s modernization not as a technological upgrade but as the construction of a two-tiered system – one for beneficiaries with strong credit files, stable addresses, broadband access, and technological competence – and another for those without such resources, who will increasingly face longer waits, reduced access, and the escalating possibility of being unable to access benefits at all. …
16 comments:
My son gets SSI. He is in his 30's. He has zero footprint - no cell, no credit, not even a banking really because it's a rep payee account. We had to come in for the MySSA account setup, something once in the FO took 30 seconds after we had an appt and got to see someone. Lot's of disabled SSI individuals have no work history, no paper let alone digital footprints. No passport, likely just a state ID card (not DL). Verifying people like them remotely likely will fail. How do they not know this?
This new technology is going too fast and I think it’s set up in a manner to deny the public benefits that were earned after decades of hard work.
Another example of gaming the system by this administration.
During a federal trial in North Carolina over whether a new voter registration law discriminates against college students, a prominent rightwing election integrity activist previewed Republicans’ long-range plans to end same-day registration.
Judge Thomas Schroeder is deliberating over the future of provisions in Senate bill 747, which increased registration requirements for voters who cast ballots on the same day they register to vote during North Carolina’s early voting period. Schroeder called for briefs at the end of November after a week-long trial in Winston-Salem.
Cleta Mitchell, an ally of Donald Trump in his bid to overturn the 2020 election and the founder of the Election Integrity Network, offered testimony in depositions and hearings in the case, but only after losing a legally strenuous fight to avoid participating in the case.
I am significantly more advantaged than many people who interact with SSA and have struggled with the agency's digital identity verification. The first time, I had recently changed my name after getting married and didn't have enough credit history under my new name. I tried again in a few months and was able to make a mySocialSecurity account. The second time, I had to take a selfie (without glasses, as directed by the website) and a picture of my photo ID (which does have me in glasses since I am required to wear them while driving). The pictures were determined not to match and I was directed to go to the post office to resolve the issue. I instead decided to send a selfie with my glasses on and that did match, but many people wouldn't have recognized the problem or realized that sending a photo that goes against the instructions is the right way to resolve it.
Authenticating a login.gov account is hard for people. They call SSA but we can no longer do anything to help other than give them the phone number to login.gov. There seems to be an issue with the holographic design on a drivers license that causes issues. People don’t have phones to take selfies. And then we hear they get to the post office for in person verification and even that won’t work. Broken system.
Let me correct you: 99% of people can easily use this but we can’t have nice things because of a few homeless schmucks.
We used to be able to assist with some of this in the FOs and they have taken that ability away. Talk about customer service FAIL!
A lot are homeless because few have the ability to file for SSI or SSDI and/or was let go during the great employment purge of 2025, as well as the Covid pandemic that sent a lot of people onto the streets. I wouldn't call them "schmucks" though. 99%??? You don't understand rural environments where cell service, internet service, EVEN electricity is physically unavailable to them, the only way to do business is to visit a FO. Do they chose to live off-grid? Yes... and they are free to do so, but 99%? You're wrong on that number. Homeless people have more of a chance than a lot of rural resident's that have chosen to move away from society either because of their disabilities....and/or to escape people from calling them "schmucks".
They're still processing my move 10 months ago, and nobody could give me info. I kept sending in spend-down receipts, but that wasn't good enough. I cannot physically get to a field office unless I swim. I live on a rural island, and flights are numbingly expensive. FINALLY, I got a representative that went well above and beyond his job and told me exactly what I needed to do. It's still pending. IF I could visit a field office and hand them the paperwork in general, it would have saved me $200 in postage (certified, return receipt ALWAYS), and would have been done an over with, allowing the workers to move on from my case to others, though I think they'd done that already. NOBODY was giving me the proper information. I even asked right after my house sold for guidance. It was met with silence. My next step is to appeal to an ALJ and just hand him/her a pile of things SSA requested and put my hands in the air in confusion. 🤷🏼♂️. All over $23/mo. I get both SSDI and SSI, but only SSI to access state benefits as my state requires both for certain benefits, if not, I'd dump SSI.... the $2000 resource rule is draconian, at best.
A Mother Teresa award candidate replying.
Guess service to the citizen now depends upon your financial etc situation? You can have nice things but so should everyone and the government setting up a system that fails some percentage of the citizenry is something that should bother you.
Not sure 99% is remotely accurate. I would be interested in seeing login.gov data on number of successful account creations without assistance. From the volume of calls we get it is no where near 99% success.
9:42 AM,
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”
Sure the SES and SES equivalents at SSA will help. They stay up nights worrying (that they'll be made to do any work). The new Hub chiefs, like Hope Grunberg, and the other management judges in Hearings are just sick over it
Does anyone truly believe Frankie’s claim we are now a digital-first agency?
and let me correct you, 9:42:
a) less than 99% of people can easily use the current login.gov/mySocialSecurity system. Even if it got better, which it should, it wouldn't hit this benchmark. SSA primarily serves old and sick people.
b) nobody here is suggesting taking away online services. People want them to be easier to access and include more features.
c) if you don't like homeless people, you will probably like them less when they are deprived of benefits for which they qualify and they are poorer, sicker, less stable, and more upset.
d) Maybe go watch A Christmas Carol, you Scrooge. The Muppet one might be at the right level for you.
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