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).
Over the years I’ve learned how to spot the telltale signs of fake quote websites quickly. Here are the red flags to watch for:
1. The website has Google Ads for insurance – No legitimate California health insurance broker would allow ads for competitive websites to be displayed. 2. The website contains a link for “Agents” or “Brokers” – This typically means the site is going to sell your information to the agents/brokers that sign up to use the website’s service. Scan through ALL the links, top, bottom, and sides of the pages. 3. Quickly scan the privacy policy, especially the first few paragraphs, to see if they are going to provide your information to third parties – If so, they plan to sell your information to agents or email list services. 4. In California, check to see that the website displays an insurance license number (many times this is placed at the bottom of the page) – If not it could be a rogue website or a national company that might not know the specific details of the California health insurance market. 5. Look for something similar to the following wording “this website provides a free service and is not an insurer or agent/broker” – this means it is a marketing website that will sell your information to agents or refer you to a national broker for a referral commission.
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. Check the Disclaimer at the bottom of the quote request page to see if the website is going to have agents call you. 7. The quote request form requires your home address – This is not necessary to provide a quote, but will result in you getting junk in your mail box. 8. The form asks for the best time to contact you – this definitely means that agents will be calling you.
If one of the above 3 red flags occurs you should close that page; as long as you don’t hit the final “Submit” button on the request page, 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.
Tim T is an author writing about the health insurance industry. Getting San Diego Medical Insurance is easy at SPF Insurance. Find the information and tools you need, and instant San Diego Medical Insurance quotes without hassle