Yesterday, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Military Lending Act website was temporarily taken offline to accommodate various “security and performance enhancements.”

Notably, the DoD has added the ability to search using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). An ITIN is a tax processing number that the IRS makes available to certain nonresident and resident aliens, their spouses, and dependents who are unable to get a Social Security Number (SSN). This change was needed in light of the fact that being a U.S. citizen is not a requirement to serve in the armed forces, and thus the prior search functionality (which only used SSNs) potentially excluded covered individuals.

The full notice posted on the website read as follows:

Changes to MLA

The MLA website will be unavailable from 4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Thursday, March 15, 2018 to 12 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Friday, March 16, 2018. During that time, security and performance enhancements will be made to the MLA website to include updates to the reCAPTCHA functionality and increasing search capabilities by adding Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) as a search parameter.