Is the American Community Survey legit?

Yes. The American Community Survey is a real survey run by the U.S. Census Bureau, and if your address is picked, federal law requires you to answer it. The bureau sends it to about 3.5 million addresses a year, chosen at random, and uses the answers to publish yearly statistics on income, jobs, housing, education, commuting, and dozens of other topics for every community in the country.

The survey is part of the decennial census. It replaced the census "long form," which used to go to a share of households once every 10 years. Instead of asking those detailed questions once a decade, the bureau now asks a rotating sample every year. The once-a-decade census still counts everyone, with a much shorter form.

Because the survey is legitimate, scammers sometimes pretend to be from it. The bureau's official guidance says the American Community Survey never asks for:

• your Social Security number
• your mother's maiden name
• personal information through email
• money or donations
• credit card or bank account information

A field representative who comes to your door will always carry an official Census Bureau ID and a copy of the letter the bureau mailed you. To check whether a letter, call, or visit is real, the bureau says to call its toll-free line at 1-800-354-7271. You can also look up a field representative by name in the bureau's online staff search.

Answering is mandatory. The bureau says that if your address was selected, "you are legally obligated to answer all the questions, as accurately as you can." Under Title 13, Section 221 of the U.S. Code, refusing to answer carries a fine of up to $100, and giving a false answer on purpose up to $500. A later federal sentencing law, Title 18, Section 3571, raised the maximum for minor offenses like these to $5,000. The bureau cites both laws.

Your address can't be taken out of the sample once it is chosen. The bureau says removing households that would rather not respond would quickly make the results unreliable, since each sampled address stands in for thousands of similar ones. It also says it tries to keep any one household from getting the survey more than once in five years.

The answers are confidential. Title 13 bars the bureau from releasing information that identifies a person or household, and its employees swear a lifetime oath to protect it. Published tables show totals and averages, never individual answers. Our explainer on whether census data is confidential goes through the rules in more detail.

The survey's results are behind much of what's on this site, from median household income by state to the population profiles for every city and county. The bureau says the data also help steer how trillions of dollars in federal funding are handed out each year, as we covered in what the census is used for.

Sources

Survey details, verification steps, the list of things the survey never asks for, and the quote on the legal obligation are from the U.S. Census Bureau's Top Questions About the Survey page. Penalties are from 13 U.S.C. 221 and 18 U.S.C. 3571, and confidentiality rules from 13 U.S.C. 9.