Online service was unavailable on the Social Security website Wednesday morning, according to a message on the site.
Social Security advocates said they were unsure if the outage was related to a login change made by SSA in June, when Login.gov and ID.me were made the only sign-in options to access Social Security online services. The option to sign in using a Social Security username and password is now defunct.
Isitdownrightnow.com showed around 9:50 a.m. Eastern time that SSA.gov had been inaccessible for about 40 minutes, although it appeared to be available at least for general information.
Downdetector, another outage monitoring site, showed about 180 problem reports for My Social Security at one point, mostly relating to logging in. One Downdetector user expressed frustration over an ability to log in using at least two available methods.
An attempt to reach an account login through My Social Security on Wednesday morning led to this message: "We're sorry, but the online service you requested isn't available right now. We apologize for the inconvenience." A line atop that message read: "Online Service Not Available."
The site directed the user back to the main Social Security home page.
At 11 a.m., the message had been removed and IsItDownRightNow reported that the site had been up for about 30 minutes. But Downdetector continued to show problem reports.
Social Security media representatives didn't immediately respond to an email seeking information.
"The Trump administration has created chaos by pushing out many of the most experienced people charged with maintaining Social Security's website," Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told ThinkAdvisor Wednesday in an email. "That makes website issues, like the outages this morning, far more likely. This is especially concerning because Social Security leadership wants to reduce visitors to field offices by half, telling people to go online instead."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, said in another email that the group continues "to get reports of glitches on SSA's website. It looks like this is one of them. Presumably someone will figure out the problem and restore service eventually. There have been numerous issues with the SSA website since the Trump administration took over, including multiple crashes earlier this year."
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