Social Security Disruptions: What to Know About Access Issues

The Social Security Administration is reeling from dramatic changes over the past few months that have affected beneficiaries across the country, stirring widespread anxiety.

In February, the agency laid off 7,000 employees. Meanwhile, it’s become harder to contact the SSA via phone, and the website has been struggling to stay online.

According to a report from The Washington Post this week, the Social Security Administration website issues have left beneficiaries unable to log in. There have been spates of intermittent uptime and crashes caused by an influx of traffic due to an expanded fraud checking system that wasn’t tested at scale.

Below, we’ll break down what’s been going on at the SSA and call out a few things you can try to do if you run into issues yourself. The agency provides benefits to 73 million recipients, so even a modest percentage of that could be a substantial number of people.

For more, don’t miss Social Security Disability Insurance recipients may want to file taxes this year.

Newly expanded fraud checking system

An expansion of an existing contract with a credit-reporting agency seems to be the main source of the SSA website issues, according to the report in The Washington Post. The agency tracks an assortment of personal information for verification purposes, and claims now require these checks to happen earlier in the process, boosting traffic volume significantly. It also appears that the implementation wasn’t tested at the full scale of the website, and bugs resulted in the login portal failing, leaving Social Security recipients unable to access their accounts, the report said.

Login issues, missing information and a broken appointment system

Many people are having trouble logging in to their My Social Security accounts, and those who can get in don’t seem to get much further. Some people who can successfully log in discover that information is missing, with many Supplements Security Income recipients receiving incorrect messages saying they «currently are not receiving payments.»

The Post’s report also says people aren’t able to schedule appointments at all via the website, which has led them to wait on hold for extended periods. Long waits on the phone have been common in the past but seem to be getting markedly worse. The New York Times also has a recent report with similar findings.

Employees have limited access to internal tool systems

It’s not just beneficiaries: Outages mean employees at the SSA are also being locked out of their internal tools at times, preventing them from completing tasks at offices. This has resulted in some employees having to write down on paper information from recipients and manually input the information once their system goes back online, according to the Post’s report.

Payments haven’t been affected

Despite the problems, payments haven’t been affected, at least not yet. If you’re in good standing with your My Social Security account, you can more than likely get away with not logging in while the issues get resolved.

More-strict identification rules go into effect on April 14

In late March, the SSA announced new rules pertaining to identity proofing that will go into effect on April 14. The new rules said that in-person identity proofing for people unable to use their My Social Security account will be required for certain services. It later announced on X (Formerly Twitter) that it had walked back some of the restrictions.

Prior to the rollback of restrictions, those applying for retirement or survivor benefits and spouse or child auxiliary benefits who can’t use their online account would potentially be required to do in-person identity proofing. Now, as long as you pass the anti-fraud check, any claim can be completed over the phone. If you’re flagged during the check, you will have to complete your claim in-person and can expect additional identity proofing measures.

The only thing that hasn’t been touched by the rollback is if an individual needs to update their direct deposit information for any benefit and cannot perform or complete the action online. This will require an in-person visit at a local office.

What can you do now?

If you’re unable to log in to your My Social Security account and need to make an adjustment to your account, like updating your earnings or changing your emergency contact information, you have a couple of options.

First, you can try to use the phone system by calling 1-800-772-1213. Once you get through the menus, you should be given an estimated wait time. You can visit the SSA’s contact page to see the average wait times per hour on any particular weekday.

If you’re limited on time or can’t get through via phone, you can also head to a local field office. And despite the rumors of field offices potentially closing all over the country, the SSA published a blog post that said rumors were false and that it hasn’t closed one field office in 2025, only General Services Administration office spaces that were underutilized, and most of which had no assigned employees.

Because of the website problems and the problems making an appointment, wait times at local offices could be longer than usual. But at least for now, these offices aren’t going anywhere.

For more, check out the Supplemental Security Income payment schedule and the Social Security and SSDI cheat sheet.