When a representative of the Social Security administration, be they an employee or contractor, calls you to follow up on a benefit application submitted online are they required to fully identify themselves, that is, both first and last name? If they are only required to give their first name do they have an employee/contractor ID number that can be used to reference them as a source of information? Basically, it's not very useful for an applicant/beneficiary to only be able to say "I spoke on the phone with Mary from Social Security and she told me..." I have a SSA publication from Jim Borlund, Acting Deputy Commissioner for Communications, that says: "If you do receive a call from one of our representatives, they will provide you with a telephone number and extension." Is that true, especially the extension part? I did see POMS GN01070.315 "Direct Contact by Telephone" but it is quite vague.

Hi,

Technically, federal employee names and salaries are considered as public information under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). However, if an individual employee refuses to tell you their full name it might take a formal FOIA request to get it. You might want ask to speak with the employee's supervisor if you're uncomfortable dealing with an employee who won't tell you their full name.

I can tell you from my experience as a 36 year employee of Social Security that I always gave customers my full name, and I believe that all of my co-workers did the same. And, I always gave customers my phone number and extension upon request. We didn't have any type of employee ID numbers by which we could be identified by members of the public, though. If you question the legitimacy of a call that you receive from Social Security, at a minimum the employee should be willing to tell you the office from which they're calling and provide you with a call back number. You should then be able to verify the phone number for that office using Social Security's office locator: https://secure.ssa.gov/ICON/main.jsp.

I can assure you that it's very commonplace for Social Security to need to contact people who file online in order to obtain supplemental information, or to request evidence when required. So, if you received such a phone call it would not be out of the ordinary.

Best, Jerry