INSS Halts Services for Dataprev Migration and Extends Refund Deadline to March 20

Overview

• Meu INSS and the 135 helpline are offline from January 27 to 31, and all Social Security agencies are closed for in‑person service from January 28 to 30, with service expected to resume in early February.
• INSS moved the cutoff to request reimbursement for unauthorized deductions to March 20, citing recent instability and the scheduled Dataprev maintenance window.
• About 6.3–6.4 million people have contested charges, roughly 4.2 million have already received refunds, and around R$2.8–R$2.9 billion has been returned, with hundreds of thousands still eligible to join the agreement.
• Dataprev attributes recent failures to an access spike more than 200% above normal, peaking at roughly 10.8 million visits, driven by benefit adjustments and new consignado credit unlock requirements.
• To blunt the outage’s impact, INSS is holding weekend mutirões and allowing rebooking without losing the original request date, while a new national queue has initiated analysis on about 105,150 benefits with 2,375 staff.