The Social Security Administration corrected millions of records, and says there's more to fix

By Alessandra Malito

The agency says some files were missing important data, including dates of death and citizenship statuses

The Social Security Administration announced it has corrected millions of records, and plans to fix millions more.

In an effort to thwart fraud, the Social Security Administration said it has fixed millions of records and is working on correcting millions more.

The agency said it was in the process of correcting 8.5 million records with inaccurate citizenship status, and "has implemented stronger internal controls to prevent inaccuracies due to manual data entry from occurring in the future."

The Social Security Administration called it "the most comprehensive SSN record cleanup in the agency's 91-year history," according to a statement released on Tuesday. The agency said it has corrected about 15% of all active Social Security numbers.

"The Social Security number database is our country's books and records. The database's accuracy is essential to maintaining integrity of government services for citizens. Accurate SSN records prevent fraud across federal programs and support the proper administration of benefits," Frank Bisignano, the Social Security Administration commissioner, said in the statement.

The statement did not say whether any fraud or improper payments had been discovered.

The update comes more than a year and a half after the SSA first began the restructuring process. Along with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the Social Security Administration said it planned to reduce its workforce, cut costs and move some services primarily online. In February 2025, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPCX) CEO who was then heading DOGE, said millions of dead beneficiaries were receiving benefits.

Bisignano assumed the top seat at the SSA a few months later, in May 2025. At the time, he said he would use his technology background to reduce payment errors and improve the agency's outdated technological infrastructure.

So far, the agency has already updated dates of deaths and citizenship statuses, it said. Using data from the Department of State and internal Social Security Administration systems, the SSA added 17 million dates of death to records that were missing this information. It also used data from the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) service to update about 25 million records missing citizenship information, it said.

But critics said SAVE data isn't reliable. "The SAVE database is notorious for having inaccurate data," said Max Richtman, president and chief executive of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. "That's one of the arguments Democrats have used in lawsuits against Trump forcing states to compare their voter rolls with SAVE data. So now at least some of the inaccuracies have been transferred to SSA's files, thus doubling down on the use of inaccurate data and making it even more difficult to find an uncorrupted file to check data against."

Richtman is also concerned about the "agency's stewardship of sensitive information, its adherence to due process, and its commitment to serving the American people," he said. Numerous whistleblowers have come forward in the past two years to say the agency was mishandling its private data.

The Social Security Administration did not respond to a request for comment, or to questions regarding why there was so much incomplete data or what about citizenship statuses were inaccurate.

Under Bisignano, the agency has focused heavily on digital-first strategies. The agency has mentioned a "digital-first agenda" in its proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 and has told MarketWatch previously that its hiring efforts were aligned with goals to leverage new technology, improve processes and update tools to "better serve the public."

-Alessandra Malito

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10-20-26 1626ET