A collection agency calls and says they can take your Social Security.
They are lying.
A credit card company, a hospital, a car lender, a debt buyer who bought your old account for four cents on the dollar, none of them can touch your Social Security. Federal law protects it from ordinary commercial creditors, and that protection is strong.
Now the part that is less comforting.
The federal government can garnish it. And it does, routinely, to a lot of retirees who never saw it coming.
Unpaid federal taxes. Federal student loans. Child support and alimony. Certain other federal debts. All of those can reach into your monthly check before it ever arrives.
So the honest answer is not yes or no. It is: protected from private creditors, exposed to the government.
Let's go through exactly who can take what, what the limits are, and the specific step that protects the money once it lands in your bank account, because that is where most people actually lose it.