The Social Security Administration (SSA) has confirmed it is investigating the origin of an outage of a website portal that recipients use to access their benefits.
“There have been a couple of recent incidents impacting [the] My Social Security [portal] and we are actively investigating the root cause,” SSA spokesperson Nicole Tiggemann told The Epoch Times on Wednesday, responding to a question about the reports of portal outages.
Describing the disruptions as brief and about “20 minutes each,” Tiggemann said that “SSA’s website remained operational while some people may have experienced a problem signing into their personal My Social Security account.”
Notably, individuals who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI), including disabled seniors and low-income adults and children, had reported receiving a notice that said they were “not receiving benefits.” The agency said that the notice was a mistake.
Roughly 7.4 million seniors, adults, and children receive SSI benefits, according to a 2023 report. It is unclear how many people received the mistaken message on their portal.
Amid the outages, the agency has pushed users toward in-person and online services in a bid to increase efficiency and target alleged fraud. Recently, the agency backtracked on an announcement that would have required some existing and new Social Security recipients to travel to the agency’s field offices to verify their identity.
In its latest announcement, the SSA stated that individuals applying for Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, or Supplemental Security Income who are unable to use the agency’s website can contact the agency by phone and complete their claim without having to appear in person.
He said that Medicare, disability, and SSI applicants “will be exempt from in-person identity proofing because multiple opportunities exist during the decision process to verify a person’s identity.”
Only individuals who seek to apply for retirement, survivors, or auxiliary benefits but cannot do so via the agency’s portal must visit a Social Security field office to prove their identity, the statement said. That verification, however, won’t be required in some “extreme dire-need situations,” it added.
The initial announcement about requiring people to go to field offices drew backlash from Social Security and retiree groups, including the nonprofit AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons.
A lawsuit challenging work undertaken by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is still ongoing in the courts. Last month, U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander wrote in an order that DOGE can no longer access Social Security databases and questioned DOGE’s mission to combat fraud, waste, and abuse.
She sided with plaintiffs who had argued that the organization’s access could violate Americans’ privacy rights while ordering DOGE to hand over any information that may contain people’s personally identifiable information.
Approximately 72.5 million people, including retirees and children, receive Social Security benefits every month.
