MassHousing's Website Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency ("MassHousing") website. Your privacy is one of our top priorities. The following policy applies only to the use of MassHousing's websites, including but not limited to www.masshousing.com, www.emasshousing.com, www.masshousingrental.com and www.massclimatebank.com (collectively, the "Websites"). Our MassHousing's Consumer Privacy Policy governs our relationship with our residential mortgage borrowers.

Other websites operated by other state agencies or other entities have different policies. We strongly suggest that you read the privacy policies for any external website that you visit through a link appearing at this site. In particular, please note that although some of the social media pages used by MassHousing might appear to be part of this website or at a webpage under MassHousing's control, these sites are actually hosted by third party providers. Thus, when visiting third party social media sites, you are subject to different privacy policies and terms of service.

Your privacy

Your privacy with respect to the use of this website results from a partnership between MassHousing and you, the user. At this website, we work to protect your privacy to the maximum extent possible. However, because some of the information that we receive through this website is subject to Public Records Law, Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 66, Section 10, we cannot ensure absolute privacy or anonymity. Information that you provide to us through this website may be made available to members of the public under that law. This policy informs you of the information that we collect from you at this website, what we do with it, to whom it may be disseminated, and how you can access it. Based on this information, you can make an informed choice about your use of this website.

Personal information

We use the term "personal information" to mean any information that could reasonably be used, alone or in combination, to identify you, including your Social Security number, birth date or any combination of information that could be used to identify you. MassHousing will never ask for "sensitive personal information," such as Social Security numbers, outside of a secure environment.

Each of our online applications is within a secure environment.

Information voluntarily provided by you

This website may collect voluntary information from you through the emails that you send through this site, forms completed at this site and any comments posted on social media pages linked to from this website or maintained by MassHousing. All such comments and emails sent by you may contain personal information. MassHousing ensures the safety of your information by providing secure environments for applications and forms to be completed when sensitive personal information is required, however, any personal information submitted on a third party site (such as social media accounts) is not controlled by MassHousing.

Information automatically collected and stored by this website

In order for MassHousing to track and analyze usage, navigational and other statistical information of MassHousing's website, we use cookies to collect and store various information to help personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that contains unique information that a website can use to track such things as your password, lists of web pages you have visited, and the date when you last looked at a specific web page, or to identify your session at a particular website. A file allows the website to recognize you as you click through pages on the website and when you later revisit the site. A website can use cookies to "remember" your preferences, and to record your browsing behavior on the web. We use cookies to tell us:

• The Internet domain from which you access this website.
• Your Internet Protocol (IP) address.
• The type of browser and operating system you use.
• The date and time you visited this website.
• The pages you viewed on this website.
• Your browser version and operating system.
• The geographic region from which you connect to our website

This site also currently uses Google Analytics and may use other providers to track and analyze non-personally identifiable usage and volume statistical information through the use of cookies, anonymous identifiers or other technologies. We use this information to track the traffic, usability, performance, and effectiveness of our website and marketing campaigns. Please note that this is not personal information, only general summaries of the activities of our visitors and customers in aggregate. At this time, we will not attempt to match any personally identifiable information that you provide to us with your IP address, unless there are reasonable grounds to believe that doing so would provide information that is relevant and material to a criminal investigation.

You can generally accept or decline the use of cookies through a functionality built into your web browser. Although you can prevent websites from placing cookies on your computer by using your browser's preference menu, disabling cookies may affect your ability to view or interact with some websites. If you want to learn more about cookies, or how to control or delete them, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org for detailed guidance. In addition, certain third party advertising networks, including Google, permit users to opt out of or customize preferences associated with your internet browsing.

Dissemination of your personal information

We do not sell any personal information collected through this website.

However, once you voluntarily submit personally identifiable information to us, its dissemination is governed by the Public Records Law, the Fair Informational Practices Act (Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 66A) and other applicable laws and regulations.

To assist us in offering you services, we may share certain information collected from you with service providers to assist us with operating our website and technical support for other products and services. These companies act on our behalf and are obligated to keep the information we provide to them confidential and secure. 

Your access and opportunity to correct

The Public Records Law and the Fair Information Practices Act provide you certain rights to get information about you that is in our records. To learn more about the circumstances under which you can get and correct this information, please reference the Massachusetts Law About Freedom of Information and Public Records. If you would like to correct any personally identifiable information, please contact MassHousing as provided in the "Contact information" section below.

Security

Because this website does not encrypt incoming email or comments, you should not send information that you consider highly sensitive through this website. We use security measures to ensure that personal information is not lost, misused, altered, or unintentionally destroyed. We also use software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. 

Protections against misuses of personal information

MassHousing strives to maintain the reliability, accuracy, completeness, and currency of your personal information in its databases, and to protect the privacy and security of its databases. MassHousing maintains physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect the confidentiality of your personal information. The security measures in place on the website and computer systems aim to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of the personal information that you provide to us. MassHousing keeps your personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, or to comply with any applicable legal or ethical reporting or document retention requirements. Our records retention policy follows the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Statewide Records Retention Schedule.

Social media features

Our website includes social media features, such as the Facebook "Like" button and X (formerly known as Twitter) "follow" button, or the link to MassHousing’s YouTube channel. These features may collect your IP address and which page you are visiting on our website, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features are hosted by a third party. This Privacy Policy does not apply to these features. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy and other policies of the companies providing them.

External websites

Our website may provide links to third-party websites, applications, and other digital services. We do not control and are not responsible for the content or practices of these other websites, applications, and other digital services. This Privacy Policy does not apply to third-party websites, applications, and other digital services, and users should therefore review and consult any privacy and other policies applicable to these third-party sources before using them.

Policy changes

We may change this policy at any time by posting the amended terms on this website. If changes are made, we will notify you by revising the date at the top. If material changes are made to this policy, we will provide prior additional notice, such as adding a statement on the homepage of our website one day before posting our changes. Unless stated otherwise, any information we collect under the current privacy policy will remain subject to the terms of this policy. After any changes take effect, all new information we collect, if any, will be subject to the new policy, however, we will not materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of your information that we collected in the past without your opt-in.

Contact information

For questions about your privacy while using this website, please contact MassHousing at:

MassHousing
One Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108
webinfo@masshousing.com