How to Protect Your Social Security Number in 2026

If your number has already been misused, skip ahead: start at IdentityTheft.gov or call 1-877-438-4338. The FTC site builds a recovery plan from your answers.

Step 1: Do it yourself for free

Three common misuses of an SSN have their own free lock: new credit in your name, a tax return filed for your refund, and a job taken under your number. Each lock is run by a different agency, and none is automatic.

Open your my Social Security account

SSA’s own advice for protecting your identity is to review your earnings history and watch your account for unusual activity. Wages you never earned are a sign someone is working under your number.

You sign in through Login.gov or ID.me. SSA says Login.gov needs an email address, a government-issued photo ID and a phone number.

Or block online access to your record

If you won’t use the account and your number has been exposed, SSA can shut online access instead. Call 1-800-772-1213 (TTY 1-800-325-0778), Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. SSA’s Publication 05-10220 (March 2024) explains the trade-off: “No one, including you, will be able to see or change your personal information on the internet or through our automated telephone service.” To lift the block later, you call again and prove who you are.

Get an IRS identity protection PIN

The IRS calls its IP PIN “a six-digit number that prevents someone else from filing a tax return using your Social Security number.” Anyone with an SSN or ITIN who can verify their identity can enroll, even if they don’t have to file.

The fastest way is the IP PIN section of your IRS online account. Plan for the follow-up: the PIN is valid for one calendar year, and a new one is generated each year. If you opt in online, you look it up online each year. The IRS doesn’t mail it. The IRS also says it will never call, email or text to ask for your PIN.

Lock your SSN in E-Verify

E-Verify’s Self Lock is for job fraud. With your SSN locked, an employer who runs it through E-Verify gets a mismatch. You need a myE-Verify account and three challenge questions. Before you start a new job with an E-Verify employer, lift the lock in your account. It only covers employers that use E-Verify.

Freeze your credit at all three bureaus

The FTC says that while a freeze is in place, nobody can open a new credit account in your name, and “there’s no cost to place or lift a credit freeze.” It lasts until you lift it. You have to place it separately at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

Equifax’s page says placing, lifting or removing a freeze is free. Experian says you only need a free account, no PIN, and the freeze works in real time. Parents can freeze a child’s credit under 16 by the bureaus’ own steps.

If the option isn’t there

• Can’t verify online? The IRS has a paper application and in-person checks for the IP PIN, which take longer. For my Social Security, SSA sends you to a local office, by appointment.
• Need credit while frozen? Lift the freeze at the one bureau your lender uses, then put it back. The FTC recommends that.
• Already a victim? A free fraud alert at one bureau is shared with the other two and lasts one year. With an FTC identity theft report, an extended alert lasts seven years.

Step 2: When doing it yourself isn’t enough

The free locks block. They don’t watch. Nobody tells you if your SSN turns up on a breach dump, or if someone uses it at a lender that doesn’t pull a frozen report. Watching is on you. AnnualCreditReport.com gives free credit reports every week, but you have to remember to pull them.

There’s also upkeep: six separate accounts or calls, a new IRS PIN every year, and a freeze to lift before every loan. If one of these steps slips, the gap stays open until you notice it.

Step 3: Use one service that does it for you

If you’d rather have alerts in one place, I’d look at Aura. It names SSN monitoring as a feature on its pricing page; details are in the Aura review. Its identity theft page promises an alert “if your Social Security number (SSN) is found on the dark web.”

Its pricing page lists two SSN features. One is dark web monitoring for your SSN and other personal details. The other is an alert “if your identity and SSN are being used for high-risk transactions, like payday loans.” Every adult plan adds three-bureau credit monitoring. Aura’s instant lock covers your Experian file only. For the other two bureaus, Aura offers help placing a freeze.

Choose a plan. On 10/08/2026 Individual was $12/mo billed annually or $15 billed monthly, with $1M identity theft insurance and a 14-day free trial. Family covers 5 adults for $32/mo billed annually. Aura’s footnote says child members on Family get only online account monitoring and SSN monitoring.

Create the account. Sign-up starts with an email. The bar shows four more steps: Name, Address, Details and Payment. For Individual yearly, the order summary showed $288.00 crossed out and $144.00 billed yearly, with “Pay $0 now.” It didn’t show a renewal price.

Start Aura’s 14-day trialAffiliate link · how it works →

In our Aura run, the Address step asked for a home address “to verify your identity,” and I stopped there. I didn’t see the Details or Payment screens, or the dashboard. Expect to enter your SSN at some point: a service can’t watch for a number it doesn’t have. Aura refunds annual plans within 60 days, by phone only.

If you’d rather use another service

LifeLock by Norton is the other identity theft service we checked. Its checkout asked for your SSN before payment. Core was $124.99 a year on 10/08/2026. See the LifeLock review, whether LifeLock has a free trial and LifeLock pricing.

Service	Free	Checkout price shown	Cancel steps	Data asked before payment	Support (ET)	Reviewed on
Aura	14-day trial, “Pay $0 now”	$144.00 first year, Individual; renewal not shown	7 online steps, per help center	Email, name, home address; later steps not seen	Phone 24/7, email	10/08/2026
LifeLock	30-day trial	$124.99/yr, Core; “Tax May Apply”	7 steps in your Norton account, per help center	Email, phone, SSN (last 4 or full) and date of birth, address, card	Phone and chat 24/7	10/08/2026

Is it worth paying? See what’s actually free

Start with the four free steps. They block more than any paid alert can. Then read what Aura’s plans include, or compare services on best identity theft protection.

See also

• What to do if your identity is stolen
• Credit lock vs. credit freeze
• Dark web monitoring
• Identity theft insurance
• Best identity theft protection

What we checked

• Official pages, captured 10/08/2026: SSA my Social Security, SSA FAQ KA-01687 and Publication 05-10220, IRS identity protection PIN, E-Verify Self Lock, FTC Credit Freezes and Fraud Alerts, FTC What To Know About Identity Theft, IdentityTheft.gov, AnnualCreditReport.com, Equifax and Experian freeze pages
• Government accounts: not opened. my Social Security, the IRS online account and myE-Verify need your SSN and a photo ID, so the free steps come from the agencies’ own pages, not from inside an account
• TransUnion’s freeze page showed a security check to our connection on 10/08/2026; its steps aren’t quoted here
• Aura: pricing page, identity theft protection page and the first sign-up screen, captured 10/08/2026. Our Aura run the same day stopped at the home address step, so the SSN step and the dashboard weren’t seen
• LifeLock: checkout fields from our LifeLock run of 10/08/2026
• Where the run stopped: desk review only for the free steps (official pages of SSA, IRS, E-Verify, FTC and the credit bureaus; no government accounts opened). Aura: sign-up opened to the email step on 10/08/2026; the earlier Aura run the same day stopped at the home address step

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