Social Security Administration to require in-person identity checks for new and existing recipients

[happy feet]

10. First, social security already investigates fraud

so this is a solution to denying rightful persons their social security by requiring them to travel (elderly or disabled) IF there is even a local social security office.

This is high on my mind as I just applied for soc sec online November 2024. My husband applied same date online. I received approval February 15th, my husband's application online was still stuck in stage 2 as of a few days ago (stage 3 being approval.

BTW--I am very tech savvy---worked in IT for 45 years and learned to program using machine language and punched cards when I started in the industry.

I say this because even I had to call soc sec (long wait times up to 2 hours---got through the 3rd time in 30 mins) to understand the holdup in processing my husband's application submitted same date/time. Turns out they had transferred his application to a farther soc sec office for processing (due to overload) and that person had yet to confirm his earnings - so the agent did so and put a note for the 2nd person to go ahead and approve expeditiously. This was impossible to accomplish online. Put my husband on the phone and the phone verification IMO is perfectly fine to prevent fraud...they ask a series of questions only the person would know. If husband needed to go to office in person, instead of the office 15 mins away he would have had to travel 45 mins to a farther office...just to find out the issue was on soc sec end---not his.

A solution looking for a problem that will discourage and prevent the elderly and disabled from being able to apply or get their issues handled over the phone.