The Social Security Administration announced Tuesday that it has corrected records tied to nearly 15% of all active Social Security numbers, calling it the largest cleanup of the agency’s database in its 91-year history. The fixes touched roughly 330 million U.S. citizens and nearly 390 million records in total.
The corrections are part of the Trump administration’s push to root out benefits fraud by closing gaps in federal recordkeeping that critics say left the system vulnerable to abuse.
Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano, who also leads the IRS, said the database underpins the government’s ability to deliver services with integrity.
“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,” Bisignano said. “This is the first time SSA has undertaken an effort of this scale.”
According to SSA, the agency added 17 million missing dates of death to records that had none, pulling data from its own systems and the Department of State. It also updated roughly 25 million records that lacked citizenship information, using the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) service. Another 8.5 million records with inaccurate citizenship status are still being worked through.
SSA says it has also tightened internal controls to stop the kind of manual-entry errors that let bad data pile up for decades in the first place.
Why the Numbers Were Wrong
Bisignano has described the effort as reconciling SSA’s Numident master file, the backbone record system for every Social Security number issued. He told The Baltimore Sun that some numberholders on record appeared to be “150 or 160 years old,” ages that obviously don’t correspond to living people and that he said “create vulnerabilities” for fraud.
The cleanup builds on work the Department of Government Efficiency started in March 2025, when it flagged roughly 3.2 million numberholders aged 120 and older as deceased.
Democrats Push Back
Not everyone is cheering the overhaul. A former SSA employee testified to Congress that the agency pressured staff to assign death dates to people who were still alive. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent Bisignano a letter demanding answers on the agency’s handling of death records. SSA has denied adding 2.7 million names to its Death Master File.
Separately, a federal judge has blocked the administration’s use of the SAVE citizenship database, leaving part of the broader verification effort tied up in litigation even as SSA touts the scale of the corrections it has already made.
SSA administers benefits for tens of millions of older Americans and people with disabilities. President Trump pledged to go after fraud and waste in the system after returning to office.
