Social Security Says It Has Corrected Nearly 50 Million Number Records in Its Largest Cleanup Ever

The Social Security Administration says it has finished the biggest cleanup of Social Security Number records in its history.

The agency told Fox News on Tuesday that since President Trump took office in January 2025 it has corrected almost 15% of active SSNs for U.S. citizens. That is nearly 50 million of 330 million records.

The numbers. According to the agency, the work added 17 million dates of death that were missing and updated about 25 million records that lacked citizenship information. It is correcting another 8.5 million records that carry the wrong citizenship status. These are the agency's figures. We did not audit them.

The reason. SSA says clean records are needed to stop fraud, because states and federal agencies use SSNs to verify identity and benefits. Commissioner Frank Bisignano called the database "our country's books and records" and said this is "the first time SSA has undertaken an effort of this scale."

A related result. Fox notes that Treasury reported earlier this year it used SSA's Full Death Master File to stop roughly $99 million in payments marked for dead people.

The wider effort. In March Trump signed Executive Order 14395, creating a Task Force to Eliminate Fraud chaired by Vice President JD Vance. On Tuesday, Trump and Vance announced a Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program in the Oval Office. Trump said qualifying tipsters could get a 1% commission, subject to rules. Fox says a White House official had first described it as a $25 million program with rewards up to $30,000.

What the report leaves out. It does not say how many of the corrected records involved noncitizens, how many payments were actually stopped by the cleanup, or what the work cost.