In addition to the impact of confidentiality protections on response rates, our disclosure avoidance system protects against direct threats to the disclosure of our respondents’ data. Many vendors collect, sell, and publish data about people living in the United States. While many commercial vendors have access to data on name, address, and data of birth, less have access to the type of rich demographic data the Census collects on characteristics like race, ethnicity, and household relationships.  

The information on demographic characteristics these vendors lack is precisely the sort of information collected by the decennial census. The disclosure of these types of characteristics could not only make it easier to target individuals – particularly in vulnerable populations like communities of color, same-sex couples, older adults, or parents of very young children—for fraud, enforcement actions, disinformation, or physical or virtual abuse, but it would also undermine the public’s trust in the confidentiality of its census response, which will cause people to be less likely to respond to future censuses, and the accuracy of the census will necessarily suffer as a result.