Student Loan Help Offers: Verify Before You Share Anything
A caller promises loan forgiveness and asks for your FSA ID. How to confirm your servicer, what real help costs (nothing) and requests that end the call.
A voicemail says you qualify for loan forgiveness and need to act before a program closes. Repayment rules really have been changing, so it doesn’t sound crazy. Before you call back, there is one site to open and one thing you never hand over.
Scammers follow the news, and student loans have supplied plenty of it. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General writes in its July 2026 FraudGram that “fraudsters, cybercriminals, and other bad actors try to exploit student loan borrowers and students to steal their money, personal information, or both.” The checks below are the same whatever the program of the month happens to be.
Thirty seconds on the call
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau publishes a list of warning signs. Here is how they sound in real life and what to do.
| What the caller says | The CFPB’s warning sign | Your move |
|---|---|---|
| “There’s a one-time enrollment fee.” | “Pressure you to pay up-front fees” | End the call |
| “You’re approved for immediate forgiveness.” | “Promise immediate student loan forgiveness or debt cancellation” | End the call; forgiveness usually takes years of qualifying payments |
| “We’ll clean this off your credit report.” | “Guarantee they can remove legally owed debts” | End the call |
| “Just sign this so we can talk to your servicer.” | “Demand that you sign a ‘third party authorization'” | Don’t sign |
| “I’ll need your FSA ID to pull up your file.” | “Ask for your Federal Student Aid information” | End the call |
| “We work with the Department of Education.” | “Claim to be affiliated with the Department of Education or your student loan servicer” | Verify on your own |
Set up your own reference point now
Do these once, on a quiet evening, and the next call becomes easy to deal with.
- Go to StudentAid.gov by typing the address. The FTC’s June 2025 alert says to start there for any federal loan help.
- Find out who your servicer is. Your account shows it, along with the balance and repayment status. Write the servicer’s name and phone number in your contacts.
- Check that your email and phone on file are current, so genuine notices reach you.
- Use a strong, unique password for the account and store it in a password manager.
- For private loans, the FTC says to contact your lender. If you don’t know who that is, a recent billing statement will tell you.
When the offer might be real
Legitimate programs exist, and so do legitimate letters from your servicer. The way to tell them apart is to look up the program yourself:
- If you hear about a program by name, look it up on StudentAid.gov. Enrolling there or through your servicer is free. The FTC says “there’s nothing a student loan debt relief company can do for you that you aren’t able to do for yourself for free.”
- If you get a letter or email, don’t call the number in it. Use the number you saved from your account.
- If a deadline is mentioned, check it on StudentAid.gov. The FTC warns that scammers push urgency, telling people “you need to act fast.”
We haven’t summarized current repayment plan rules here, because they are changing and the details depend on your loans. Go to StudentAid.gov or your servicer for those.
A quick word about companies that are real but useless
Not every company charging for help is a criminal operation. Some are legal businesses selling paperwork you can do yourself for free. The test is the same: you don’t need them for a federal loan. The FTC’s case against Panda Benefit Services shows where the worst of it goes. The FTC said the companies collected more than $16.7 million in illegal upfront fees, and they were banned from the debt relief business.
If you already gave something away
- Shared your FSA ID: change the password at StudentAid.gov right away, then check that the contact details and servicer are still correct.
- Signed a third-party authorization or power of attorney: call your servicer on your saved number and ask how to revoke it.
- Paid a fee: contact your bank or card issuer the same day and ask about stopping or disputing it.
- Gave your Social Security number: follow our 30-minute lock-down plan, and consider the IRS IP PIN.
- Report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to your state attorney general.
People get caught by these calls because the program names are real and repayment is confusing. The fix is simply to go back to the official source.
Help a recent graduate
New borrowers start receiving these messages about when their first payment comes due, and they are the least likely to know what a normal servicer email looks like. Send them this one piece of advice: if someone contacts you about your loans, close the message and open StudentAid.gov yourself. Our callback routine gives the general version, and our guide to checking a refund without the message’s link applies the same idea to tax season.
What to tell a parent who cosigned or helps pay
Parents and grandparents who help with payments get these calls too, often with a claim that their child’s loans are about to default. The same checks apply, with one addition: they should call the borrower before doing anything. A real problem with a loan will be visible to the borrower in their own account. It doesn’t need to be solved over the phone by someone who called out of the blue.