Unemployment website intentionally bad to help deter fraud?

Technology
1

So, I’m just curious. In WA state, the site to claim unemployment benefits is often difficult to log in to. Some of the things that happen are:

  1. Login fails with no reason given
  2. Sometimes it wants 2FA, which often fails on the first try. Again, no reason given
  3. If 2FA fails, it will often kick you out to another site that has multiple state sites you can log in to such as vehicle registration along with the unemployment services site.

It often takes me two or three tries to get in, occasionally I get in the first time.

So, I’m wondering if this is a strategy to deter fraud or if the site just sucks? The first time I filed for unemployment benefits was, luckily, the week before COVID hit the fan in 2020 and subsequently caused massive delays for those collecting benefits the week after me. I don’t recall the site being as difficult to get into then as it is now. I think the amount of unemployment fraud during COVID in WA state alone was in $550M to $650M, of which they’ve recovered about half, so it seems plausible to me that they’ve made it intentionally hard to get into, but I’m not exactly sure if that will keep the truly determined from stealing.

BTW, I’ll be working again soon.

2

Wow, that’s mind boggling.

3

The mysterious login fails and 2FA hiccups can be hair-pulling. No reason given? That’s Classic from them.

4

So you are telling us that people take advantage of poorly run government programs ? That is shocking…

1 Like
5

Ya, go figure, eh? LOL

6

There’s another explanation: it could be a strategy to deter eligible people from collecting unemployment. Think of all the money the state is saving by collecting premiums that won’t be paid out!

7

That could be. I have wondered about how some people get through it when people that are very computer literate are having trouble.

8

There might be a more mundane answer. For the part year or so I’ve had sites that wouldn’t let me log in. I’d fill in all the blanks, hit continue and find myself back at the login screen which was again blank. No explanation whatsoever. These were sites I had accessed probably multiple times a month for years and years. This most frequently occurred after there had been a notice about being down for updates or how do you like the new look of our site? After a number of failed attempts I switched to a different browser for those sites and then had no issue logging in. I started to blame the issue on the site no longer supporting my browser of choice.

I recently set up a new computer and transferred literally everything to the new one. Imagine my surprise when my browser of choice suddenly worked again on the problem sites. The major difference between the old and new computers is that I had never updated to Windows 11 on the old one and it came preloaded on the new one. It’s certainly seems possible the very up to date site software just wasn’t playing nicely with my not so up to date system.