SSA to tighten up service to identity theft victims under new law

Victims of identity theft will soon have a single point of contact at the Social Security Administration after the president signed a bill into law Wednesday requiring the agency to lock in new procedures for handling the misuse of SSNs.

The Improving Social Security’s Service to Victims of Identity Theft Act (H.R. 5345), which passed the House late last year and cleared the Senate last month, directs the SSA commissioner to establish protocols to better assist individuals who have lost their SSN cards or whose SSN cards have been fraudulently used to obtain benefits.

For people seeking replacement SSN cards, the Social Security Administration will now provide a single point of contact that will be available “throughout the resolution of the individual’s case,” per the bill text. 

That contact will be tasked with tracking the individual’s case from start to finish, while coordinating with other agency units to resolve the issues as efficiently as possible.

“Americans recovering from identity theft should not have to fight through layers of red tape to receive help,” Rep. David Kustoff, R-Tenn., the bill’s lead sponsor, said in a press release Thursday. “With President Trump’s signature, victims will have a trained Social Security Administration employee responsible for coordinating their case and seeing it through to resolution.”

According to the Federal Trade Commission, there were 1.36 million reports of identity theft in the country in 2025, a nearly 20% year-over-year jump. An annual breach report conducted last year by the Identity Theft Resource Center found that the U.S. saw 3,322 data compromises, an all-time high, with 2,236 involving SSNs.

“The theft of someone’s Social Security number can do real damage to that person’s life,” House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said in a press release. “Cleaning up that mess should not require a call center scavenger hunt or being bounced from one Social Security official to the next. This law fixes that.” 

The law “puts a dedicated team in charge of a victim’s case from the first call to the last,” Smith continued, “so that families can now spend their energy getting their life back instead of repeating their story to a new stranger every time they call.”

Bill Sweeney, senior vice president of government affairs at AARP, said in a statement that the law will ensure that victims of identity theft get a “clearer, faster path to the assistance they need” from SSA.

“Victims of identity theft have their hands full, and the last thing they need is to be bounced around the Social Security Administration when trying to get a new Social Security number,” Sweeney said. “This bill is a welcome relief for victims who need help as fast as possible when they’ve been scammed.”