• Home
• About
• Privacy Policy
• RSS

San Diego Medical Insurance Quotes- Protect Your Personal Information at Rogue Websites

Rogue health insurance websites are set up to capture personal information from people trying to get instant quotes, and then the websites sell that information to agents. In the results from 2 Google searches for “Pregnancy Health Insurance” and “Maternity Insurance Plans,” almost 50% of the top 20 results were rogue websites. There are plenty of legitimate health insurance websites to choose from, but you need to be able to distinguish the good from the bad. When you click the “Get Quote” button on rogue websites, you are essentially telling them, “Please have 5-10 medical insurance agents call me for the next 8 weeks to sell me a policy,” and “Please sell my email address to other list services and health insurance agents so I can receive their emails.” I’ll show you how to recognize these websites before they deceive you.

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).

As a result of that experience I learned the telltale signs of rogue websites and can now recognize them quickly. Here is the list of red flags to watch for:

1. There are Google Ads for insurance on the website – legitimate California health insurance brokers would not allow ads for competitors to be displayed. 2. There are links for “Agents” or “Brokers” on the website – typically this means the site sells leads to agents and brokers that sign up to use the website’s services. Search through ALL the links on the top, bottom, and sides of the pages. 3. Browse the privacy policy to see if they will provide your information to third parties – this means they will sell your information to agents and email list services. 4. The website has no insurance license number displayed (this is usually at the bottom of the page) – brokers that focus on the California market are required to display their license number. If there isn’t a license number it could be a rogue website or a national company that does not know the details of the California health insurance market. 5. Look for the following text “this website provides a free service and is not an insurer or agent/broker,” or something similar near the top or bottom of the webpage – this identifies a marketing website that will sell your personal information to agents or refer you to 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 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.

Finding rogue San Diego health insurance websites in a Google search is pretty common, and they tend to show up in longer keyword searches. To ensure you are working with a legitimate San Diego medical insurance website, you need to look for the key signs identified above. Those signs are Google insurance Ads, bad privacy policies, Agent/Broker links, disclaimers, no insurance license, or text saying the website is not an insurer or broker. Watching for these signs will make your search less stressful, and keep your personal information safe.

Comments