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Politics · US federal government · published 2026-10-20 · via NOTUS/The Guardian

Social Security Completes Huge Data Cleanup After Fraud Allegations

Image via NOTUS/The Guardian
Image via NOTUS/The Guardian

The Social Security Administration has corrected death and citizenship data for nearly 15% of active Social Security numbers. The cleanup added 17 million death dates and updated millions of citizenship records. Officials did not say whether the changes stopped improper payments or saved money.

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The agency said the review corrected death and citizenship fields for about 15% of active SSNs, including 17 million missing death dates. It also updated 25 million files that did not show citizenship information and plans to fix another 8.5 million with incorrect citizenship status, drawing on Homeland Security's SAVE database.

The effort followed 2025 claims by Donald Trump and Elon Musk that many people were wrongly receiving benefits; Lee Dudek, then acting commissioner, explained that the entries appeared in older databases that lacked death dates and did not prove anyone was collecting benefits. Trump later stopped emphasizing the claim, but the agency kept working on

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This summary is Al-enhanced to contain extended analysis and broader social context. The original is {NAME); the linked article is the authoritative source. Original headline: “Social Security Fixes Millions of Records After Trump’s Fraud Claims Fade Away.” Browse more stories.