Is anyone familiar and/or concerned with the adoption of ID.me in 2026 to access Medicare and SS? Didn’t we recently need to create an identity though Login.gov, and now must upload even more information (selfie, DL, passport, etc.) to a private company (ID.me)? This rollout doesn’t appear to have had the extended time frame and alerts that changing to the Login.gov site provided. It is also putting more information online, with more potential for breaches. Plus, it will be even harder for many seniors who are not as up to date with technology. Your thoughts?
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I do ID.me. Very easy peasy once set up. Some other site’s I use actually use it as well. I am starting with Medicare in March and will be using it I guess.
Small Medicare card tip. I use my son’s old Yugio card plastic sleeves for the Medicare card. Keeps it great in my wallet and the background Red color looks kinda cool.
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Also awhile ago I “locked “my social security card online. I just asked and got a new one but I had two stolen identity issues so figured it was a good idea. I don’t take SS yet but hope it doesn’t mess something up. Applying to Medicare didn’t seem to affect it.
I log into SSA and Medicare using login.gov. I have not received any notifications that say I will have to use id.me in 2026. Is this just for new online accounts?
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I had to do ID.me to file rebate and senior freeze paperwork with New Jersey last summer. So I set it up then. Was an onerous process with the picture matching and drivers license etc, but it seems now to work seamlessly with fed sites, so I’m glad it’s done.
I agree 100% - and I put it off as long as I could. It felt like it took forever to create the account too.
Same here, hubby and I both use login.gov - if I recall we had the option to do id.me or login.gov and we picked the latter. I also have not heard that we must start using id.me.
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We both had to create ID dot me accounts when dealing with two different government agencies. Created one for Mr. to submit paperwork the IRS requested to prove that our solar system cost as much as we claimed in spring of 2024. Then I had to go through the process in 2025. It was quite easy to do that.
My FIL moved into assisted living and got a new bank account. I tried no less than 12 times to create an online social security account for him so we could change his direct deposit account and update his address, but we were unsuccessful using both ID.me and Login.gov. When I called the SS office, they said the only option was for him to appear in person and make the changes, which is much too difficult. The photo I took and the photo of the Drivers license were not clear enough because our state updated our drivers licenses and the photos look very dim when photographed. He didn’t have an online account previously (he has never had a computer). I’m going to try the apps again in January and hope we can make it work. I can’t imagine how hard this would be for an elderly person who is on their own.
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My mil is very proud of the fact that she does nothing online.
I wonder how this will affect her. And my mom who does things online but gets confused these days and it’s difficult to navigate anything new
You’ve probably already done this, but I’d advise anyone who’s having trouble to try again with a different browser. I do some things in Firefox and some things in Chrome (and some in Safari on my phone), and I’ve found many times I’ll get a weird error message in one, and copy the exact same url into the other one and it works fine. May have something to do with ad blockers, privacy settings…?
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either will work. Login.gov can be a little less user-friendly but some might prefer it as ID.me is owned by a private entity licensed by the government.
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From what I can tell after a bit of research, those of us with login.gov accounts can keep using them … until we have to make some sort of change to our information (the only example I found is bank account). At that time, it looks like we’ll need to do the id.me identity verification to make changes.
That would be nice. I have both for logins for me, but for mom, only have login.gov. I am the only one that uses her online accounts, so hopefully I can get by without setting up an id.me for her.
Echoing this, I do most things on Firefox because I don’t like working through one of the big tech companies, but I almost always need to switch to Chrome to get my Social Security site to work.
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Note that there are several Chromium based browsers if you need that rendering engine but do not want Google integration, tracking, etc. (Chromium is the open source base developed by Google upon which Chrome is based.)
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I use Safari (on a Mac) and frequently have to switch settings (Safari/Settings for My.SSA…Uncheck content blockers and Allow Popup Windows)
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I posted this somewhere, not in this thread (I think…) but there are different levels of login.gov.
I got a login.gov for the state dept’s STEP program, to report foreign travel. It works fine there. But for SSA, the need is to get a super-duper upgrade of login.gov, that requires all the annoying intrusive stuff.
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@garland I have never had trouble logging in to SSA on Foxfire from my Mac. I pretty much only use Firefox.
I wasn’t trying to make a blanket statement. Just describing my own experience.
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