Washington DC - Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is taking away the ability of Social Security recipients to change their direct deposit information over the phone.

Recipients – many of whom are elderly or have a disability – will be forced to physically travel to an office to change direct deposit routing numbers and bank information if they don't have internet access.

DOGE reportedly backed down from a plan to outright scrap all phone services for those filing for help from the Social Security Administration (SSA) after facing strong backlash from critics.

The plans were revealed by the Washington Post on Wednesday, and would have hit about 73 million Americans who have relied on the SSA's phone services for decades.

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"Approximately 40% of Social Security direct deposit fraud is associated with someone calling SSA to change direct deposit bank information," an SSA spokesperson told the Post, in an attempt to justify the changes that were still made.

According to the SSA, the protocol of asking questions via the phone to verify a client's identity "is no longer enough to prevent fraud."

Changes to direct deposit information will work through two-factor authentication, or by visiting an SSA Service Center.

"This is identical to the fraud protections at almost all major banks, where deposit changes are made either online or in person," DOGE said in a post on X.

Experts suggest, however, that the move is a deliberate attempt to make it more difficult for the SSA to serve their customers and provide services.

"It would certainly appear that they’re trying to break the capacity of the agency to serve its customers," Martin O'Malley, who headed the SSA under President Biden, told the Washington Post.