Ethics & Privacy

Census.com adheres to Title 13 of the U.S. Code, which makes disclosure of identifiable information illegal and carries criminal penalties. We never store or process individual-level microdata that could identify persons or households. All outputs are either aggregated tables or synthetic data that preserves statistical properties while eliminating personal identifiers. Our systems are designed with privacy by default, including automated suppression rules and noise addition where appropriate.

We follow Census Bureau disclosure avoidance protocols, including cell size thresholds, top and bottom coding, and sampling-based perturbation for public-use microdata sets. Outputs are reviewed against small-n risk thresholds before publication. For interactive maps and visualizations, we exclude geographic units below designated aggregation levels unless they meet statistical confidentiality criteria. This ensures no individual or small group can be singled out.

Our ethics framework is reviewed annually by legal counsel and privacy officers, with input from the Census Bureau’s Disclosure Review Board guidelines. Users receive clear guidance on limitations of public data use, including warnings against inferring individual characteristics from aggregate tables. This shared responsibility helps maintain trust in public data and prevents misuse of sensitive demographic information.