We at HUD.GOV are committed to protecting the privacy and security of our visitors to this website. Outlined below is our online privacy policy. If you have questions about this policy, please let us know. Contact information is contained at the link at the end of this notice.

Collection and disclosure of information: To ensure we are able to communicate effectively with visitors to our website, we collect some information that can be directly associated with a specific person. We call this "Personal Information," and it includes, by way of illustration, names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses. We collect Personal Information from eligible individuals who affirmatively request to receive email or other services from us. We collect this Personal Information in order to provide these eligible individuals with timely information via email regarding events, resources and issues. It is our general policy not to make Personal Information available to anyone other than our employees, staff, and agents.

Online Comments and Personal Information: We treat your name, city, state, and any comments you provide as public information. We may, for example, provide compilations of your comments to national leaders and other individuals participating in our efforts, without disclosing email addresses. We may also make comments along with your city and state available to the press and public online.

Opting out and modifying information: Subscribers to our email list may terminate their subscriptions via a link at the bottom of each email sent from HUD.GOV.

Browser information collected on the website: We log IP addresses, which are the locations of computers or networks on the Internet, and analyze them in order to improve the value of our site. We also collect aggregate numbers of page hits in order to track the popularity of certain pages and improve the value of our site. We do not gather, request, record, require, collect or track any Internet users' Personal Information through these processes.

Cookies: A cookie is a tiny piece of data stored by a user's browser that helps a website or service recognize that user's unique computer. You can remove or block cookies by changing the settings of your browser. Session specific cookies may be used on HUD.GOV to improve the user experience and for basic web metrics. These cookies expire in a very short time frame or when a browser window closes and are permitted by current federal guidelines.

Videos that are visible on HUD.GOV are hosted by third parties that may utilize "persistent cookies." Persistent cookies are used by some third party providers to help maintain the integrity of video statistics. These videos are subject to the HUD.GOV linking policy described below. If you would like to view a video without the use of persistent cookies, a link to download the video file is typically provided just below the video.

Privacy of our email lists: As noted above, we maintain email lists to keep interested, eligible individuals informed about important topics, and individuals must affirmatively request to join them. We configure our list server software to refuse to divulge the email addresses of our list subscribers to anyone other than those whom we authorize. However, we are not the author of this software, and are not responsible for any failures in the software to preserve subscriber anonymity.

Children's privacy: Because we care about the safety and privacy of children online, we comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its accompanying FTC regulation establish United States federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet. We do not knowingly contact or collect personal information from children under 13. Our site is not intended to solicit information of any kind from children under 13. It is possible that by fraud or deception we may receive information pertaining to children under 13. If we are notified of this, as soon as we verify the information, we will immediately obtain parental consent or otherwise delete the information from our servers.

Security: We maintain a variety of physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect your personal information. For example, we use commercially reasonable tools and techniques to protect against unauthorized access to our systems. Also, we restrict access to Personal Information to those who need such access in the course of their duties for us. Your own efforts to protect against unauthorized access play an important role in protecting the security of your personal information. You should be sure to sign off when finished using a shared computer, and always log out of any site when viewing personal information.

HUD systems are also protected by EINSTEIN cybersecurity capabilities, under the operational control of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). Electronic communications may be scanned to look for network traffic indicating known or suspected malicious cyber activity, including malicious content or communications. Electronic communications may be collected or retained by US-CERT only if they are associated with known or suspected cyber threats. US-CERT will use the information collected through EINSTEIN to analyze the known or suspected cyber threat and help and other agencies respond and better protect their computers and networks. For additional information about EINSTEIN capabilities, please see the EINSTEIN program-related Privacy Impact Assessments available on the DHS cybersecurity privacy website (https://www.dhs.gov/privacy-foia-reports#4) along with other information about the federal government’s cybersecurity activities..

Linking: HUD.GOV may contain links to websites created and maintained by other public and/or private organizations. HUD.GOV provides these links as a service to our users. When users link to an outside website, they are leaving the HUD.GOV site and are subject to the privacy and security policies of the owners/sponsors of the outside website(s). Be sure to review the HUD.GOV linking policy, which is the same as USA.gov Linking Policy.

HUD and Social Media or Third Party Sites: In addition to HUD's official website on www.hud.gov, HUD uses social media and third party sites to provide HUD content in a different format that may be useful or interesting to you. When we use these sites, the information we provide is consistent with the intended purpose of the HUD website. No personally identifiable information (PII) may be requested or collected from Social Media sites. Please be aware that the privacy protection provided on social media and third party sites that are not a part of the hud.gov domain may not be the same as the privacy protection described here.

Changes to this policy: We will revise or update this policy if our practices change, or as we develop better ways to keep you informed about them. You should refer back to this page often for the latest information and the effective date of any changes. If we decide to change this policy, we will post a new policy on our site and change the date at the bottom. Changes to the policy shall not apply retroactively.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.