Privacy policy

What we collect

If you only browse

• Quick check answers. On the home and qualify pages, the answers you give (household size, income, age group, veteran status, disability, first-time buying, voucher, and where you want to look) are saved in your own browser. They are not sent to us. They are forgotten after 90 days, and you can clear them any time by clearing your browser's site data.
• Technical records. Like any website, our servers and our hosting provider see your IP address, browser type, the page you asked for, and the time. Filters you choose, such as a state or a city, appear in the page address. Household size, income and your other answers are never part of a page address.
• Visit counts. We count which pages are viewed and a few actions, such as saving a listing, using a filter or finishing sign-up, to learn what helps and what doesn't. This sends the page path and the name of the action, plus standard technical details such as your browser, operating system, screen size, language and the site you came from. It never includes your household size, income, ages or other answers, your name, email, phone or address, or the listing you looked at. A filter action carries only the filter's name, such as "location", never what you chose. We don't record sessions, clicks or what you type, and we don't follow you across visits, devices or other sites. It also sends your general location: your country, state and city. Our hosting provider estimates it from your connection each time a page loads, and the visit data does not include your IP address. To count each visitor once a day without cookies, the counting tool makes a temporary visitor code from your connection and browser details, then discards your IP address. The code changes every day, so it can't link your visits on different days. The counting tool is not loaded at all if your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal. We ask the provider to discard your IP address, and it keeps event data for the period its plan sets.
• Bot-check signals. Where we switch on a bot check on a form, the check provider reads signals such as your IP address and browser details to tell people from bots.

If you create an account

• Sign-in details. Your email address. If you use Google sign-in, Google also sends us your name, email address, profile picture link and a Google account ID. Our sign-in provider records when you sign in, the IP address and the browser you used.
• Your profile. Your full name, contact email and phone number, and your birth year if you give it. Your household: for each person, a first name, relationship to you, birth year, whether they are a full-time student and whether they are moving in. These can include children. Income for you and each person: the kind of income, amount and how often. Savings and other assets, if you give them. What you are looking for: rent or buy, places, highest rent or price, bedrooms, and when your lease ends if you give it. The cities where you live and work, and your choice about email alerts.
• Optional answers about who will live in the home. Whether anyone is 55 or 62 or older, a veteran, or has a disability, and whether you are buying a first home. Some programs reserve homes for these groups. Every one of these answers is optional. We use them only to leave out homes you can't apply for and to show homes you may qualify for.
• Saved listings and your tracker. The listings you save, and for applications you tell us you made yourself: the listing, the status you choose, a confirmation number and notes if you add them, and the dates.

If you write to us

• Contact form. Your name, email address, the topic, your message and a listing link if you add one. If you are signed in, the message is linked to your account.
• "Notify me" button. Where a feature is marked "Coming soon", the "Notify me" button sends a short email to our team with the email address of your account. We don't save it in our database or add it to your profile. Your browser remembers that you pressed the button, so it doesn't ask twice.

What we do not collect

We don't collect Social Security numbers, bank account or card numbers, or government ID numbers, and we have no field for them. We hold no passwords. We don't collect information about you from data brokers. If an application on a program's own website asks for any of these, you give them to the program, not to us.

A place to keep housing documents is marked "Coming soon". It is switched off, so there is nothing to upload today. If we turn it on, we will update this policy first and explain what it covers and how files are protected.

About other people in your household

An adult account holder enters information about other household members, including children. We use it only to work out household size, income and age rules, and we collect it from you, not from the children. We keep it to the minimum the rules need: a first name, a birth year and a few facts about the person.

How we use your information

• to create your account and sign you in;
• to work out which listings you may qualify for and show you matches that fit what you asked for;
• to keep your saved listings and your application tracker;
• to answer your messages and fix problems you report;
• to send the emails the service needs, such as your sign-in link, and alerts you choose once they start (see "Email" below);
• to keep the site safe: to stop spam, bots and abuse, and to find and fix errors;
• to follow the law and to protect our rights and other people's.

We don't use your information to show ads, to build advertising profiles, or for anything unrelated to running the service. Our "you may qualify" results are estimates for your convenience. They don't decide anything about you. The housing program decides.

We don't sell your information

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We have no advertising on the site, and we use no ad trackers. Our visit counts are the only analytics, and they can't follow you from one day to the next or to other sites. We don't send your information to housing programs, because you apply yourself on each program's website.

Who helps us run the site

We use outside companies to run the site. The providers of our database, email, security, analytics and hosting handle your information only to provide that service to us, under their own terms and privacy policies. Google sign-in and map services, when you use them, also follow their own privacy policies. The kinds of providers are:

• Database and secure storage. Holds your account, profile, household, saved listings, tracker and contact messages. The database is hosted in the United States.
• Sign-in. Handles the one-time email links and keeps your sign-in sessions, with your email address and the time, IP address and browser of each sign-in. If you choose "Continue with Google", Google sees that you are signing in to Fair Shot Housing and sends us your name, email address and picture. See "Google user data" below. Google's privacy policy.
• Email delivery. Sends our emails, such as sign-in links, replies to your messages and notes to our team. It handles the recipient's email address and the message.
• Maps and location display. Listing maps load map images from a mapping service, which sees your IP address and the area of the map you view. A map embed from another provider, if we switch one on, may also set its own cookies. Listing addresses are public information.
• Security and bot protection. Tells people from bots and blocks abuse on our forms. It reads signals such as your IP address and browser details.
• Visit counts (analytics). Receives the page path and the action names described above, with your browser's standard technical details. It gets your general location (country, state and city) from our hosting provider and does not store your IP address. It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device, and it does not build profiles of people or use the data for ads.
• Website hosting. Carries the site's traffic, so it sees every request (IP address, page and browser) and keeps short-term request logs. We plan to move hosting to a new provider.

We may also share information when the law requires it (for example a valid court order), to protect someone's safety or our rights, or if the business is sold or reorganized, in which case we will tell you and this policy will keep applying to your information unless you agree to a change.

Google user data

This section applies if you choose "Continue with Google".

• What we receive. Your name, email address, profile picture link and Google account ID, through the basic sign-in permissions (openid, email and profile). We don't ask for your contacts, files, calendar, email or any other Google data.
• How we use it. To sign you in and create your account, to match you to an existing account that has the same verified email address, and to show your name and picture in the site menu.
• Where it is stored and who sees it. In our database, as part of your sign-in record. We share it only with the service providers that run the site for us, as needed to provide sign-in. We don't sell it, we don't use it for ads, and we don't use it to train machine-learning or AI models. Our staff don't read it except to keep the service secure, to follow the law, or when you ask us to look into a problem.
• How to stop and delete. You can remove Fair Shot Housing's access at any time in your Google Account connections. You can delete your account on our site, which deletes your sign-in record and the Google information in it.

Fair Shot Housing's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Cookies and storage in your browser

• Sign-in cookies. When you sign in, our sign-in provider sets a cookie in your browser that keeps you signed in. Google sign-in also sets a short-lived cookie that protects the sign-in from forgery. These are needed for the site to work, and they are ours (first-party).
• Browser storage. Your quick check answers (saved for up to 90 days) and a small note that says you pressed a "Notify me" button. They stay on your device. If you opt out of visit counts, we store one setting in your browser to remember that.
• What we don't use. No advertising cookies, no tracking pixels and no social media buttons. Our visit counting stores nothing on your device: no cookie and no browser storage. The site's font files are served from our own site, so loading them sends nothing to other companies.
• Outside services. A map or a bot check, if we show one, is loaded from the provider that runs it and follows that provider's own policy.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. We don't track you across other websites, and we don't sell or share your information for advertising, so these signals change little. We still honor them: when your browser sends one, the visit-counting tool is not loaded.

Email

We send emails the service needs, such as your sign-in link, and replies to your messages. Email alerts about new listings and closing dates are coming soon. Alerts will go only to people who have them turned on in their profile, will say they come from Fair Shot Housing, will tell you why you got them, and will include a way to change how often or to turn them off in your profile. We will stop sending when you ask. The law (the CAN-SPAM Act) gives us at most 10 business days to honor an opt-out, and we aim to do it right away.

We don't sell or rent your email address, and we don't send other companies' marketing.

How long we keep it

• Quick check answers: in your browser only, forgotten after 90 days.
• Account, profile, household, saved listings and tracker: until you delete your account.
• Contact messages: until you delete your account (messages linked to your account or sent from its email address are removed with it), or until you ask us to delete them. We have no fixed schedule for removing other messages yet.
• Rate-limit counters: a one-way scrambled form of your IP address, used to slow down abuse, is kept for about 8 days and then removed automatically.
• Sign-in records: your sign-in sessions are removed when you delete your account. Our sign-in provider may keep short-term security records for the period it sets.
• Server logs: kept briefly by our hosting provider, currently for a few days (3 to 7, depending on the plan).
• Email records: our email provider keeps a record of the messages it sends for the period it sets.
• Backups: if our providers keep backups, deleted information leaves them when the backups are replaced, which can take some weeks.

We may keep information longer if the law requires it or we need it to handle a dispute.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself. Sign in, open your profile, choose "Delete account", and type DELETE to confirm. It acts right away and can't be undone. It removes:

• your profile and household, including income and assets;
• your saved listings, tracked applications and their timeline, and your alert history;
• any files or records stored under your account;
• contact messages linked to your account, and messages sent from your account's email address;
• your sign-in, including the Google information it holds.

Some copies last a little longer: entries in server logs and in our providers' backups and email records, for the periods in the previous section. Things you gave to a housing program or to Google stay with them, and we can't delete those. Quick check answers live in your browser, so clear your browser's site data to remove them.

If you can't sign in, use the contact form (choose "Privacy request") or by email at privacy@fairshothousing.com.

Your rights and choices

Privacy laws in several states give residents rights over their information. Those laws mostly apply to businesses above certain size or data-volume limits, and we don't claim to be covered by, or exempt from, any particular one. We give these rights to everyone, wherever you live:

• Know. Ask what personal information we hold about you and how we use it. This policy lists the kinds; ask for the specifics.
• Correct. Change your profile any time on your profile page, or ask us to fix something you can't.
• Delete. Use "Delete account" on your profile page (see above), or ask us.
• Get a copy. Ask for a copy of the information we hold about you. We send it in a common file format.
• Limit sensitive information. The sensitive answers in your profile (such as disability and veteran status) are optional. You can leave them blank, change them, or delete them whenever you like. We use them only to show you homes you can apply for.
• Opt out of sale or sharing. We do not sell or share your information, so there is nothing to opt out of.
• No unfair treatment. We won't treat you worse for using these rights.

How to ask. Send a message through the contact form (choose "Privacy request") or by email at privacy@fairshothousing.com. Write from the email address on your account, or tell us enough to find your account. We may ask a question or two to confirm it is you. You don't need an account to make a request. An agent you authorize may ask for you; we may ask you to confirm that.

How fast. We answer within 45 days. If we need more time, we can take up to 45 more days, and we will tell you why.

If we say no. You can appeal by replying to our answer, or through the contact form (choose "Privacy request") or by email at privacy@fairshothousing.com. We will respond to an appeal in writing within 45 days. You may also contact your state attorney general about a privacy concern.

California residents. California's law covers businesses above set size limits, and we make no claim either way. The information in this policy is what we collect and why. We don't sell or share personal information, as those words are defined there. We process sensitive information (such as disability and veteran status, if you give it) only to provide the matching you asked for.

Children

Fair Shot Housing is for adults. You must be at least 18 to create an account. The site is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from children. If you are a parent and think a child has given us information, tell us and we will delete it. If we learn that a person under 18 has made an account, we will delete it. Information about children in a household profile is entered by the adult account holder, as described above.

Security

We take reasonable steps to protect your information:

• the site and our providers use encrypted connections (HTTPS), and our database provider encrypts stored data;
• in our database, each person's profile, household, saved listings and tracker can be read only by that person's own signed-in account;
• we hold no passwords, and sign-in uses one-time email links or Google;
• private keys stay on our servers and are never sent to your browser;
• we limit who at the company can reach the database, and our providers' systems store the data, so their authorized staff can technically reach it to run their service.

No website or storage system is perfectly secure, so we can't promise that your information will never be accessed without permission. Please keep your email and Google accounts secure.

If a breach puts your personal information at risk, we will tell the people affected and the authorities as the law requires, without unreasonable delay. For New York residents, that means within 30 days after we discover the breach. We will send notice to the email address on your account.

Where information is handled

Our database is hosted in the United States, and our other providers handle information mainly in the United States. If you use the site from another country, your information is sent to and handled in the United States, where privacy laws can differ from those where you live.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows the current version. For a change that matters, we will tell you at least 14 days before it takes effect, by email to your account address or by a notice on the site, unless the law or a security problem requires faster action. If we want to use information we already hold for a new purpose, we will ask you first.

Contact us

WMI Ventures LLC, doing business as Fair Shot Housing is responsible for your information. Questions about privacy, or a request about your information? Reach us through the contact form (choose "Privacy request") or by email at privacy@fairshothousing.com. WMI Ventures LLC keeps the name, email address and message you send so it can reply and fix problems.