DOGE Social Security Data Breach Puts Retirees at Risk

While DOGE was disbanded last August, lawmakers and Social Security advocates worry the latest revelation is just the beginning of what could be a massive data breach orchestrated by the group.

The DOGE breach should serve as a warning to retirees to be on top of their Social Security correspondence and be on the lookout for scams. And an SSA staff exodus in the wake of the group's rampage means retirees are more likely to be hit with overpayments, underpayments and delays, Social Security advocates say.

"A scammer who knows someone's Social Security number, bank routing info, and other personal details can mail them a letter that looks like it is from SSA — designed to steal their benefits," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, on Monday in an email. "Seniors, especially those with cognitive impairments, are in the greatest danger."

Added Altman: "If beneficiaries who are dependent on their Social Security receive a form, plausibly from the government, telling them that if they don't provide certain information, their benefits will be suspended, even knowledgeable people will be inclined to at least call the designated number to get more information. Scams like this already take place regularly, but now every single one of us is at risk."

Most of the DOGE office functions have been absorbed by the Office of Personnel Management, but "the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen," OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote on X last November.

Whistleblower Report

Whistleblower Chuck Borges, SSA's chief data officer, raised concerns last August of "serious data security lapses, evidently orchestrated by DOGE officials, currently employed as SSA employees, that risk[ed] the security of over 300 million Americans' Social Security data."

The "alarming" news of the data leaks proves Borges was right, Larson and Neal said Jan. 20 in a statement.

Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, "said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes," Politico reported.

Larson and Neal called on House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith and every Republican on the Ways and Means Committee to "break their silence on what could very well be the largest data breach in our nation's history and as we have now learned, may have implications for election security."

"The 'DOGE' appointees engaged in this scheme — who were never brought before Congress for approval or even publicly identified — must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for these abhorrent violations of the public trust," Larson and Neal said.

Last March, the two lawmakers introduced the Protecting Americans' Social Security Data Act to block political appointees, like Musk and DOGE, from accessing sensitive data systems at SSA. The bill seeks to "establish privacy requirements in law for beneficiary data and strengthen oversight and civil penalties for any privacy and disclosure violations of Social Security beneficiaries' personal information," the lawmakers said.

'Tip of the Iceberg'

The latest DOJ findings are "just the tip of the iceberg," Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told me in an email. "The court filing was the bare minimum the Trump administration had to acknowledge. We need to know who has our data, and why."

Borges "revealed that DOGE stored that data on an unsecured private server, so now anyone could have it — including hackers and malevolent foreign governments," Altman said. "That could have all manner of consequences this year, including making Social Security beneficiaries more vulnerable to fraudsters."

The revelations from Trump's DOJ "simply confirm what advocates strongly suspected from the beginning of the Trump administration — that DOGE operatives have misused and shared Americans' most personal private data with those unauthorized to access it," Altman said. "This is exactly what we assumed last year, when DOGE forced out Social Security's acting commissioner, Michelle King, after she refused to hand over the data."

The most recent report by DOJ "of DOGE malfeasance are not isolated," added Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, in a statement.

"In August, DOGE team members were found to have uploaded the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to a 'vulnerable cloud server' without any credible explanation," Richtman said. "We have warned from the beginning that DOGE had no business accessing this data and that no good could come of it."

Barbara O'Neill, a certified financial planner and former professor at Rutgers University in Ocala, Florida, said in an emailed response Monday that the information about the DOGE data breach "is as concerning now as it was a year ago when DOGE was accessing Americans' personal data in the Social Security and other government data bases."

O'Neill, who now teaches older adults about financial planning at a nonprofit called Master the Possibilities Inc. and runs a financial education company called Money Talk, said she tells her students to:

• Add two-factor authentication to all their accounts with sensitive data;
• Read all written correspondence from Social Security;
• Beware of fraudulent Social Security pretexting scams;
• Pull a current personalized Social Security statement (including older adults already receiving benefits) with a summary of career earnings in case this information "disappears" or is tampered with.

"Your earnings history is key to proving that you are eligible for benefits and how much," O'Neill said.

SSA 'Brain Drain'

The latest data shows that 6,645 people left SSA between January and November 2025.

"That does not account for the thousands of people who've been reassigned from other important jobs, like staffing field offices and data processing, to answer the 1-800 number," according to a spokesperson for Social Security Works.

Sadly, added Altman, "the consequences of the agency's brain drain will pile up in 2026."

The SSA workers who remain "are less experienced," Altman continued. "Many of them are being diverted from their work to answer phones, so answering times don't look so bad, and are being forced to rush when they can do their assigned work. Consequently, huge backups of the less urgent work is not getting done, which is highly likely leading to overpayments and underpayments."

As a result, "it is probable that in six months or a year, many people will get a huge bill because Social Security did not input their changed circumstances in a timely manner and therefore was inadvertently overpaying them," Altman relayed. "Others will have been underpaid, a mistake that may never be corrected, causing them to lose on earned benefits they should have been receiving."

Some beneficiaries "will find their claims stuck in limbo, waiting months to get the benefits they've earned," Altman said.

While SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano "focuses on short term metrics like phone wait times, and assigns experienced staff to answer phones, backlogs are piling up," Altman continued, noting that there are 6 million pending cases in Social Security's processing centers.

"Bisignano will find that shuffling people around is no solution to lack of trained, experienced staff," Altman said. "Social Security beneficiaries will pay the price."