We’re getting towards retirement age so I’ve been using the SSA website for some calculations and general information. My husband and I each have a login, and we can access income history and projected retirement payments.
I wanted to check something this morning and went to log in. I got:
This service is not available at this time.
Please try again during our regular service hours (Eastern Time):
Day
Service Hours
Monday-Friday
5:00 a.m. - 1:00 a.m.
Saturday
5:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Sunday
8:00 a.m. - 11:30 p.m.
Federal Holidays
Same hours as the day the holiday occurs.
If you need immediate assistance:
You may call us Monday through Friday: 7:00AM - 7:00PM at:
1-800-772-1213
If you are deaf or hard-of-hearing, call our toll-free TTY number:
1-800-325-0778
I guess maybe this could be a regular servicing/updating time or something, but it doesn’t really say that.
My guess would be some kind of routine maintenance, although beats me why they would need to be offline four hours or more every night. I would think a few hours overnight/early morning once a week, typically on a Sunday, would be sufficient.
Perhaps it’s an effort to minimize being attacked during the hours they don’t have a full-bore counterattack IT staff on duty.
It’s a form of reducing their attack surface in a way that harms the intended user community the least. To a much greater degree than, say, Amazon, their users are concentrated in the US time zones and are not as 24/7 as is the rest of the economy. So shutting it down when “nobody” is using it is easy and simple.
I pay most of my bills via automated phone systems. I was surprised to find that one of my credit cards has such a system that only operates during their working hours. WTF?
It makes sense to me. “If the site is down outside of these hours, don’t bother us, we told you it was going to be down.”
This is actually being explicit about a dirty little secret in the IT biz. Overnight backups/restarts/maintenance are usually scheduled in off-hours, which is often defined as “when American banking consumers are asleep, or ought to be.”
I’ve learned to accept that if I wake up early Sunday morning to do some online chores, half the banking websites I use are simply down with no explanation. So I’d actually be happy to see a message like you’re seeing.
I have a friend with whom I play online RPGs; for a while, a few years ago, she worked third shift, and on her “nights off,” she’d keep the same sleep schedule. So, in order to play with her, I’d stay up late (often until 3 or 4 a.m.). Probably once a month, I’d get knocked offline around 2 a.m. or so, by Comcast (my ISP), which was doing scheduled (but unannounced) middle-of-the-night maintenance.
Here’s the info from my pension system, which is better than it used to be :
Online Availability:
M, W, Th, F: 7:00 am to 9:30 pm EST/EDT
Tu: 7:00 am to 6:00 pm EST/EDT
Sa & Su: 6:00 am to 11:00 pm EST/EDT
The payroll website (also run by the state comptroller’s office) is available 24/7 - except for scheduled downtime all day on the third Sunday of each month.