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.  In a recent Google search using the terms “Maternity Insurance Plans” and Pregnancy Health Insurance,” nearly 50% of the top 20 results were rogue websites.   There are many legitimate San Diego medical 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 recognize these fake quote websites before you give them your personal information.

Ten years ago, I decided to start my own business, so I left the corporate world.  I knew I need to get health insurance for my family so I searched online for San Diego Medical Insurance.  The top links are supposed to 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 “Submit” button to get the quotes, I was taken to a generic page that said I would be contacted by 5-8 agents that would provide my instant quotes.  Twenty seconds later, my phone started ringing, and for about 2 months I got daily phone calls from a variety of agents wanting to sell me health insurance.  The junk emails were actually worse because they never stopped and seemed to multiply as time went by. I eventually had to get a new email address (this was before spam filters).

As a result of that experience I learned the telltale signs of rogue websites and can now recognize them quickly.  Here’s the red flags to be on the lookout for:

• There are Google Ads for insurance on the website – legitimate California health insurance brokers would not allow ads for competitors to be displayed.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 none of the above red flags show up, and you decide to begin filling out the quote request form to get a California Medical Insurance quote, you need to look out for 3 more red flags before submitting your information:

• Read the Disclaimer at the bottom of the quote request page – rogue websites must tell you if they will have agents call you.
• 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.
• 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.

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 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.  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.