KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas Department of Labor will launch a new identity theft system on Saturday, a spokesman told 41 Action News on Wednesday.
Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Labor, Ryan Wright said the installation of the new system will affect operations beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday until Tuesday morning.
This means the department will hold regular unemployment programs and will not pay anything out from Friday until Tuesday. This will not affect federal unemployment benefits.
"We are going to hold, at some point, benefit payments only for regular unemployment. It won't impact federal programs until after we get this implementation done," Wright said. "So we won't pay anything out from Friday to Tuesday, but then we'll make sure everyone gets paid back if they were supposed to be paid in those days."
Wright said the new system gives the department an additional tool to combat identity theft.
"This is a critical new tool that we will have in our arsenal to combat and mitigate identity theft," Wright said. "All those letters that we've been talking about that people have been receiving, employers that are getting the same letters, these benefit notices, this should eliminate that or greatly reduce."
The new system will require everyone in the state's unemployment system to verify their identity. They will be asked specific questions based on their credit history.
After being verified in the system people will then setup a two-factor authentication.
They'll be required to complete that two-factor authentication every time they access their account.
