“Recent reports in the media that Social Security plans to eliminate telephone services are inaccurate. SSA is increasing its protection for America’s seniors and other beneficiaries by eliminating the risk of fraud associated with changing bank account information by telephone.”

“SSA continuously investigates and analyzes potential threats to strengthen and secure our programs and protect people who receive benefits. Approximately 40 percent of Social Security direct deposit fraud is associated with someone calling SSA to change direct deposit bank information. SSA’s current protocol of simply asking identifying questions by telephone is no longer enough to prevent fraud,” says a Social Security Administration press release dated March 12th, headlined “Correcting the Record about Social Security Direct Deposit and Telephone Services,” and posted to their website hours after the Washington Post reported that they’re going to pull the plug on live phone support, a lifeline for luddite seniors who can’t or won’t use online portals.

Now Axios reports that the next day an internal memo circulated outlining changes that still, in the words of one former administrator, “would, in essence, break the agency,” mostly by requiring recipients to verify their identity in-person at field offices (that are being closed) rather than over the phone. “People have a lot of trouble with the identification process” already, says Jen Burdick, a lawyer who provides free legal services to recipients and that the proposed changes in the new memo are “a way they’re trying to use red tape to literally block people from getting benefits.”

In related news last week, 82 year-old Washington state man Ned Johnson told the Seattle Times that he had $5,201 wiped from his bank account after he was declared dead by DOGE last month.

After weeks of calling and calling he finally went in person to an office that’s soon-to-be-closed by Musk, waited four hours, and weaseled in to get the attention of a worker to show them his passport. It worked, kind of as Ned was resurrected insomuch as the bank returned the $5,201 to his account, but still has yet to receive his February and March Social Security payments.