RCS Draft ("we", "us", or "our") is an independent software tool designed to assist certified general appraisers in preparing draft HUD Section 8 Rent Comparability Studies (RCS). We are committed to protecting your privacy, your contact information, and the confidentiality of your appraisal practice data.
2. Information We Collect
We collect information necessary to operate our website, communicate pilot availability, and provide workflow software services:
Pilot & Contact Requests: When you submit a request for pilot access or contact us, we collect your name, email address, company name, and your message details.
Account & Auth Credentials: Authenticated appraiser users access the workspace using secure credentials. Passwords are salted and hashed using Argon2id and never stored in plain text.
Usage & Diagnostic Logs: Transient server logs contain IP addresses, request timestamps, and system diagnostics for security rate-limiting and performance monitoring.
Appraiser & Study Data Confidentiality
Subject property data, market comparables, and Chapter 9 adjustment calculations entered into your workspace are treated as confidential professional work product. We do not sell, license, share, or monetize appraiser valuation data or customer contact records with third parties.
3. How We Use Your Information
Information collected is used strictly for legitimate operational purposes:
Evaluating pilot program applications and communicating pilot onboarding terms.
Dispatching high-priority admin notifications so our team can respond to your pilot requests promptly.
Operating, securing, and maintaining the RCS Draft web application.
Enforcing security rate limits to prevent automated form spam and abuse.
4. Third-Party Services
We work with a small number of third-party service providers to operate RCS Draft:
RentCast:When you search for comparables, the subject property's address and unit type are sent to RentCast, an independent rental-data provider, to retrieve candidate market data.
Telegram:When you submit the pilot or contact form, your name, email, company, and message are relayed to Telegram's Bot API so our team receives an immediate notification. This is used solely to route the notification to us.
We do not use Google Ads, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or any other third-party advertising or analytics service. We do not send visitor or usage data to any third party for analytics or advertising purposes. See Cookies & Analytics below for details on our own first-party analytics.
5. Cookies & Analytics
Authentication cookie: Signing in sets a secure, HttpOnly session cookie that identifies your signed-in session. It is required for the workspace to function and is not used for tracking or advertising.
First-party analytics: Our public marketing pages use a first-party analytics system that we built and operate ourselves, backed by our own PostgreSQL database. No visitor or usage data is ever sent to a third-party analytics or advertising company.
We use this limited analytics system to understand interest in RCS Draft and improve the public site. It is not used for advertising, cross-site tracking, sale, sharing, profiling, or decisions about you. We honor a browser Global Privacy Control signal by disabling browser analytics for that visit.
When analytics is active, we collect, at a plain-language level:
Anonymized page-view and click events.
Bounded active-engagement time on a page (how long the page was actively in view, not idle time).
General traffic source and device/browser category (for example, "mobile / Chrome" rather than precise device fingerprinting).
A rotating, anonymized visitor identifier. This is not your raw IP address, and it is never linked to any account or contact information you may have provided elsewhere.
Retention periods for this analytics data:
Raw analytics events and sessions are retained for 90 days.
Coarse network diagnostic data, used only for bot and abuse detection, is retained for 7 days.
Aggregated statistics that contain no visitor-level identifiers are retained for 24 months.
6. Data Security
We implement administrative and technical safeguards to protect your information:
All web traffic is encrypted in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS/HTTPS).
Database backups are stored on access-controlled infrastructure. Backup encryption and off-host replication are a planned improvement and not yet in place.
The public contact and pilot-request form enforces automated rate limiting to reduce spam and abuse.
7. Data Retention
We retain pilot/contact submissions and account data for as long as needed to evaluate your application, communicate with you, and provide the service. We do not currently apply an automatic deletion schedule. You may request deletion of your contact information at any time (see Contact & Data Rights below), and we will honor that request except where we are required to retain records by law.
8. Children's Privacy
RCS Draft is intended for use by licensed and certified professional appraisers and their firms. It is not directed at, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from, individuals under the age of 18.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected in an updated "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Continued use of RCS Draft after a change constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
10. Contact & Data Rights
You have the right to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal contact data submitted to RCS Draft. If you have questions regarding this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your data rights, please contact us: