The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced Tuesday that it has corrected records for nearly 15% of all active Social Security numbers (SSN), adding missing death and citizenship data as part of the Trump administration’s drive to curb benefits fraud.
The agency called it the most comprehensive cleanup of the Social Security Number database in its 91-year history. The corrections touched roughly 330 million U.S. citizens and nearly 390 million total records. SSA laid out the figures in a statement released Tuesday.
Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano cast the database as foundational to the federal government.
“The Social Security Number database is our country’s books and records. The database’s accuracy is essential to maintaining integrity of government services for citizens,” Bisignano said. “This is the first time SSA has undertaken an effort of this scale.”
The agency said it added 17 million dates of death to records that previously lacked them, drawing on internal SSA systems and Department of State data. It updated about 25 million records with missing citizenship information using the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, service.
Rooting out fraud starts with accurate records.
Under @POTUS leadership, SSA has corrected nearly 15% of active SSNs, the most comprehensive SSN record clean-up in agency history:
✅ 17M missing dates of death added
✅ 25M records with missing citizenship info updated
🔄 8.5M inaccurate citizenship records being correctedFind more results here: https://t.co/42cpXcuvhK
— Social Security (@SocialSecurity) October 20, 2026
Another 8.5 million records with inaccurate citizenship status are still being corrected, the commissioner said. SSA added that it has put stronger internal controls in place to prevent manual-entry errors going forward.