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SummerOnTheWay1
SummerOnTheWay1
May 12, 2025

📋 AARP: Identity Fraud Victims Need More Help From SSA (AARP Article)

  • May 12, 2025
  • 6 replies
  • 3967 views

FROM THE ARTICLE:

 

AARP Backs Effort to Improve SSA's Assistance for Identity Fraud Victims.

Congressional bill calls for streamlining help for older adults whose Social Security numbers have been stolen or misused.

 

By Christina Ianzito, AARP. Published May 12, 2025.

 

Identity fraud has reached epidemic proportions in the U.S, costing Americans an estimated $47 billion in 2024, with roughly 15 million victims, according to “Resolving the Shattered Identity Crisis,” an AARP-sponsored report from Javelin Strategy & Research. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received 1.13 million identity theft reports in 2024, up from 650,000 in 2019.

Social Security numbers in particular are like gold to criminals hoping to perpetrate identity fraud, which often leaves victims to “face a daunting and frustrating process to reclaim their identity,” notes Bill Sweeney, AARP’s senior vice president for government affairs.

 

USE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE:

 

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-2025/improving-service-identity-theft-victims.html

6 replies

SummerOnTheWay1
SummerOnTheWay1Author
May 13, 2025

[Tuesday 5/13/25]

 

🤔  Anyone Else Concerned About Our FULL Social Security Numbers Are On Our MAILED Yearly Statement?

 

➡️[*** Form SSA-1099 Discussion!!!

 

I had never paid attention to the area our Social Security Numbers are printed on our YEARLY Social Security Retirement STATEMENT until JANUARY 2023 when I received that year's copy in my MAILBOX.

I guess I was not paying attention since retiring July 2020.

I am signed up to get everything ONLINE, but for some reason they INSIST on mailing ONLY this to my apartment address.

I can see the ONLINE version, so why mail me a PRINT COPY?

Hmmm, suppose a dishonest postal worker opens the envelope which is obviously just 1 sheet and from the Social Security Administration.

Suppose our mail gets stolen or delivered to the wrong person.

I would have thought using the usual x's would protect us. Example, xxx-xx-1234.

Thank you,
Nicole 👵 (Social Security Forum)

GailL1
GailL1
Community Champion ⭐⭐⭐
May 13, 2025

You should be able to opt-out of receiving the Social Security Benefits Statement by mail on your online account.

 

See item (C) 2.  on this SSA.gov page unless you might be one that has to be figured manually and then I think they are mailed.  But those are kind of rare.

 

SSA.gov - Program Operations Manual System (POMS) - GN 05002.005 The Social Security Benefit Statement 

IT‘S ALWAYS SOMETHING . . . . .. . . . Roseanne Roseannadanna
SummerOnTheWay1
SummerOnTheWay1Author
May 13, 2025

[Tuesday 5/13/25]

 

@GailL1 , when I CALLED Social Security to ask for this to change = NO mail from them in my Apartment Mailbox, I was told that was NOT an option for Form SSA-1099. Form SSA-1099 has to be MAILED. I get Retirement Social Security since 2020.

 

➡️[*** Gail wrote on 1/11/24:
===============================
I believe they are referring to the SSA-1099 - the 2022 TY document still showed the whole SS number in Box 2 -
Haven’t received the 2023 TY doc yet to see if this is still the case.

 

LINK TO THIS POST BELOW:

 

https://community.aarp.org/t5/Social-Security/Anyone-Else-Concerned-About-Our-FULL-Social-Security-Numbers-Are/m-p/2478696#M4897

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