On Tuesday, the Social Security Administration reported via a message on the social media platform X that heavy web traffic to their "my Social Security" site along with outdated computing infrastructure resulted in an online service disruption.
The agency dismissed the notion that the website outage was connected to the participation of what’s known as the Department of Government Efficiency, referred to as "DOGE." They clarified that the issue had no relation to DOGE, which is headed by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who also owns X. Furthermore, they stated in their update that this incident actually highlighted a concern that DOGE would swiftly resolve for them.
Users quickly fired back, stating that it was the agency's responsibility for the website crash since they had recently pushed harder to encourage more beneficiaries to utilize the site instead of opting for alternative methods to seek services.
Recently, the SSA mentioned identity verification For certain services like benefit claims and direct-deposit modifications, individuals must complete them either in person or via "My Social Security" online accounts. However, they subsequently amended this statement, indicating that specific categories of people would not be affected. would be excluded from the rule.
On Tuesday, the agency posted on X that it would initiate an anti-fraud verification system for telephone services starting April 14.
Some mentioned they experienced no problems with the site, or that concerns about website issues weren’t significant to them.
This issue isn’t new for those receiving benefits; they’ve faced difficulties with the SSA’s website before. Over recent weeks, the site has experienced downtime ranging from as short as 20 minutes to almost an entire day on multiple occasions, according to reports by the Washington Post. reported While DOGE aims to reduce the technology department focused on SSA by 50%, the outages might be connected to their anti-fraud system, which had not been validated for a large number of users, according to reports from the Washington Post.
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Many X users mentioned that they have attempted to reach the agency via telephone only to find themselves waiting on hold for extended periods. One user commented, "It’s been three hours of listening to your terrible hold music; you should offer an option like pressing 1 for a callback." one user said I'm starting to believe that you're attempting to make people disconnect.
The Social Security Administration offers a callback option; however, these waits can also be quite long. Based on the agency's published performance metrics available on their website, the typical callback duration in March averaged around 2½ hours. By Tuesday evening, the SSA stated on their webpage that all "my Social Security" services were unavailable. currently available .