by Tim Thompson
People searching for health insurance on the internet need to be cautious about giving their personal information to rogue health insurance websites. These rogue websites promise to give instant quotes, but capture your personal information and then sell it to agents. Results from 2 Google searches for “Pregnancy Health Insurance” and Maternity Insurance Plans,” showed that about 50% of the top 20 results were rogue websites. There are many legitimate health insurance websites that will protect your information, so you need to be able to tell the difference between good and bad websites. Clicking the “Get Quote” button at rogue websites, basically tells them to “Please have up to 8 health insurance agents call me for the next 8 weeks to sell me a policy,” and “Please sell my email address to health insurance agents and email list services so I can receive their emails.” I’ll show you how to spot these rogue websites before they get your information.
About 10 years ago, I left the corporate world to start my own business. I needed to set up health insurance for my family so I went online and searched for San Diego Medical Insurance. I figured the top links should be the best ones to visit so I did. I read a little bit of information on the first website, and it said I would receive instant San Diego health insurance quotes by filling out the website’s quote request form, so I filled out the form. When I hit the “Get Quote” button I was sent to a page that told me I would be contacted by 5-8 agents that would provide me with quotes. About 20 seconds later my phone started ringing, and for the next 2 months I received daily phone calls from agents wanting to sell me health insurance. The email barrage was even worse because it didn’t stop and I eventually had to get a new email address (this was before spam filtering).
Since then I’ve learned the telltale signs of fake quote websites and how to recognize them quickly. Here is the list of red flags to watch for:
1. Google insurance ads on the website - legitimate California health insurance brokers wouldn’t display competitive ads on their websites. 2. You see links for “Agents” or “Brokers” on the website - the website is going to sell your contact info to the agents that sign up to use the website’s services. Look through ALL the links, bottom, top, and sides of the webpage. 3. Check the privacy policy to determine if they are going to give your personal information to third parties - they have to tell you they will do this in order to be able to sell your information to agents or email services. 4. Look to see if the website displays an insurance license number (this is commonly at the bottom of the page) - if no license the website could be a rogue or a national company that won’t be as familiar with the details of the California health insurance market. 5. Scan for the following text, or something similar, “this website provides a free service and is not an insurer or agent/broker” - this is a marketing website that will sell your personal information or send you to a national broker for a referral fee.
If you don’t see any of the above red flags, and you entered your zip code and pushed the button to get a San Diego Medical Insurance quote, you still need to look out for 3 more red flags on the quote request form:
6. Look for a Disclaimer below the quote request form to see if the website is going to have agents call you. 7. The quote request form should not require your home address - this isn’t necessary to provide a quote, but will result in you getting junk mail. 8. The quote request form asks for the best time to contact you - this means agent will definitely be calling you.
If you spot any of these red flags you should close that page; if you don’t press the final “Submit” button your information will not be saved.
Rogue San Diego health insurance websites are pretty common on the internet, and tend to show up in longer keyword searches. To avoid becoming a phone and email spam victim you need to be careful to ensure you are working with a legitimate San Diego Medical Insurance website. The signs to look for are Google Insurance Ads, Agent/Broker links, no insurance license, bad privacy policies, the disclaimer, or text that says the website is not an insurer or a broker. Following these precautions will help you keep your personal information safe.