Privacy policy

Effective Date: March 28, 2022

Welcome to healthinsurance.org. At healthinsurance.org (“we,” us, “our”) we understand the importance of privacy. Protecting the privacy of your information is of great importance to us. This policy describes how we collect, use, and share information about you. Please take a moment to review the terms of our Privacy Policy.

By using this website (“Site”) you acknowledge and accept this Privacy Policy in its entirety, including our use of cookies. If you do not agree to our Privacy Policy, please stop using any services and exit the Site.

1. Information We Collect

Throughout this Privacy Policy, we refer to your information, whether or not it can be used to identify you, and whether or not you provide it to us or it is automatically collected from you, as “personal information.”

Personally Identifiable Information

Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) is any information that can be used to identify or locate a particular person or entity. This may include, but is not limited to: your first and last name, contact information such as a phone number or an email address, and information about your needs.

We collect your PII only when you voluntarily and directly provide it. We may ask you to provide contact information when you comment on an article or other content on our website.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information

When you visit this Site, we may collect certain information about you, such as the type of browser you are using (e.g., Safari, Chrome), the type of operating system you are using, (e.g., Windows OS or Mac OS), and your IP address and the domain name of your Internet service provider (e.g., Xfinity, Verizon). By itself, this information (“non-personally identifiable information”) cannot be used to identify you individually. Much of this information is collected through cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, and other tracking technologies.

We use the non-personally identifiable information that we collect to improve the design and content of the Site and to enable us to personalize your Internet experience. We also may use this information in the aggregate to analyze Site usage.

About tracking technologies:

• Cookies. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user’s device, which may be a session ID cookie or tracking cookie. Session ID cookies make it easier for you to navigate the Service and expire when you close your browser. Tracking cookies help in understanding how you use the Service, and remain after you close your browser. The Service may associate some or all of these types of cookies with your devices. Cookies may remain on your device for extended periods of time.
• Web Beacons (“Tracking Pixels”). Web beacons are small graphic images, also known as “web bugs”, “pixel tags” or “clear GIFs”, are small graphical images that may be used on the Site, or in our emails to deliver cookies, count content views and determine if an email has been opened and acted upon.
• Embedded Scripts. An embedded script is a programming code that is designed to collect information about your interactions with the Site, such as the links you click on. The code is temporarily downloaded onto your computer or other device and is deactivated or deleted when you disconnect from the Site.
• Location-Identifying Technologies. GPS (global positioning systems) software, geo-filtering, and other location-aware technologies locate you (sometimes with precision) for purposes such as verifying your location and delivering or restricting relevant content based on your location.
• Device Fingerprinting. Device fingerprinting is the process of analyzing and combining sets of information elements from a device (“Usage Information”), to identify it as a unique device. Information elements may include IP address, device identifier, browser type, operating system, data regarding network connected hardware, and information about your use of the Service. To the extent that we combine Usage Information with your Personal Information, we will treat the combined information as personal information under this Privacy Policy.

For more information about cookies (and other kinds of online tracking), please visit www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0042-online-tracking. Some browsers have incorporated Do Not Track (“DNT”) preferences. As there is not yet an industry-standard DNT protocol on how to interpret DNT signals, we do not honor DNT signals from browsers at this time. However, you may refuse or delete cookies to prevent tracking activities, as described above.

Social Media and User-Generated Content

When you interact with the Site or any of our other online properties through a social media platform, we may collect and store any PII and non-personally identifiable information that the third-party social media entity passes us. The applicable third-party application provider’s privacy controls how they use your information.

When you post content, including social media content, on this Site, we may collect any information that you make available to us in your content, including any account username or other information included in your posts.

2. How We Use Your Information

We may use your Personal Information, for any purposes consistent with our statement under this Privacy Policy or as permitted by applicable law, including to:

• Manage our Service, including your subscription to newsletters or other programs we may provide and for which you have selected;
• Offer you information about our services or other information you have requested, or to respond to your questions, emails and other requests, and to provide customer service;
• Send you technical notices, updates, security alerts, information regarding changes to our policies, and support and administrative messages;
• Prevent and address fraud, breach of policies or terms, and threats of harm;
• Monitor and analyze trends, usage and activities;
• Conduct research, including surveys, focus groups, or other insight gathering methods;
• Improve the Service or other affiliate websites, applications, marketing efforts, products, and services;
• Send you advertisements and communicate with you regarding our third-party products and services;
• Fulfill any other purpose disclosed at the time you provide Personal Information.
  

3. Sharing Information

We will not sell or rent your personal information collected on the Site with others except as set forth in this Privacy Policy. We may sell and share information we have collected about you, including personal information, with our partners for purposes of offering you information you have requested about our services or other matters.

Our policy is to permit these third-party service providers to obtain only the information they need to provide their services and to prohibit these providers from using information for any improper purpose. We also make efforts to require them to protect any personal information to the same extent that we do.

Our affiliate companies and vendors may receive, or be given access to your information, including Personal Information and Usage Information (described below), as needed for their work with us or on our behalf. Except as otherwise set forth in this section, these third parties are prohibited from using your information, including Personal Information, for any purpose other than to provide this assistance. We may permit third parties to use aggregate information which does not identify you, or de-identified data, for any valid purpose.

We also may share your information under the following circumstances:

• To comply with the law or with other legal processes and, where required, to respond to lawful requests by law enforcement or by other public authorities, or to respond to a subpoena, to meet national security or law enforcement requirements, to protect the integrity of the Service or company if we believe that a user has committed unlawful or otherwise harmful acts, or to protect our interests relating to a legal proceeding;
• In connection with, or during negotiations of, any proposed or actual merger, purchase, sale, consolidation with, or any other type of acquisition or business combination of all or any portion of the Service or our assets, or transfer of all or a portion of our business to an affiliated entity or third party;
• With our affiliates, business partners, and other third parties for their own business purposes, including audience profiling and direct marketing purposes; and
• For purposes disclosed at the time you provide Personal Information, and with your consent or discretion.

We also make efforts to require any party with whom we share information to protect Personal Information to the same extent that we do.

4. Your Rights and Choices

With respect to requesting access, opting out, or to be forgotten, please be advised:

• There may be a delay while your request is being verified, deployed and processed across our servers.
• Notwithstanding your opt-out request, we may contact you for the purpose of responding to any inquiry or request made by you.
• Please note that we will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

Accessing Your Information

You have the right to access and update certain information that you have voluntarily submitted to us through the Service by sending an email to [email protected]. We may require additional information from you to allow us to confirm your identity.

Deleting Your Information

If you would like us to delete or update the personal information that we have collected from you, please send your request via email to [email protected].

Communications

You can opt-out of receiving emails containing general information from us at any time, by following the instructions to click on the unsubscribe link, as provided in emails, or by emailing us at [email protected].

You also have a right to request not to receive telemarketing calls from us by asking us to place your telephone number on our internal Do Not Call List (“DNC List”). Our written Do Not Call Policy for maintaining our DNC List is available upon demand.

Your California Privacy Rights

This section provides additional details about the personal information we collect about California consumers and the rights afforded to them under the California Consumer Privacy Act or “CCPA.”

For more details about the personal information we collect, please see the Information We Collect section above. We collect this information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How We Use Information section above. We share this information with the categories of third parties described in Sharing Information section above. Please note that we do use third-party cookies for certain purposes.

Subject to certain limitations, the CCPA provides California consumers the right to request to know more details about the categories or specific pieces of personal information we collect (including how we use and disclose this information), to delete their personal information, to opt out of any “sales” of their information that may be occurring, and to not be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

California consumers may make a request pursuant to their rights under the CCPA by contacting us at [email protected]. We will verify your request using the information available to us and may request additional information from you, such as your email address or government identification. Consumers can also designate an authorized agent to exercise these rights on their behalf.

5. Third Party Services

This Privacy Policy does not apply to any third-party applications or software that appear on or can be accessed on this Site. We are not responsible for, and this policy does not address, the privacy practices of third parties, which are subject to those third parties’ own privacy policies. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with and consult third parties’ privacy policies and terms of use.

The Site contains software and hyperlinks to websites, locations, platforms, and services that are operated and owned by third parties. These include tracking technologies operated by third parties. For example, analytics services such as Google Analytics, may use tracking technologies on our Site that compile statistics about activity on the Site.

The inclusion of a link on our services does not imply an endorsement of the linked sites or services by us or our affiliates.

To the extent we combine information we receive from third parties with PII you have provided us, we have, we will treat the combined information as Personal Information under this Privacy Policy.

6. International Users

We avoid knowingly collecting personally identifiable information about EU residents or citizens other European Economic Area countries. Our properties, including this Site, are intended for users in the United States.

The data protection and other laws of the United States and other countries might not be as comprehensive as those in your country.

Your use of the Site or provision of any information constitutes your consent to the transfer to and from, processing, usage, sharing, and storage of your information, including PII, in the U.S. as set forth in this Privacy Policy.

7. Data Retention

Subject to any mandatory obligations to delete data, your information may be retained by us and in our agent portal, server logs, databases and records indefinitely.

8. Data Security

The security of your personal information is important to us. We take appropriate security measures (including physical, electronic, and procedural measures) to help safeguard your personal information from unauthorized access and disclosure. With regard to internal operations of any Site or property owned by us, only authorized employees and authorized third party service providers are permitted to access personal information, and they may do so only for permitted business functions.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

9. Minors’ Privacy

We encourage parents and guardians to spend time online with their children and to participate and monitor the interactive activities of their children. We will never knowingly collect any personal information about individuals under eighteen (18) years of age. If we obtain actual knowledge that we have collected personal information about an individual under eighteen (18) years of age, that information will be immediately deleted from our database. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe that your child under age eighteen may have provided personally identifiable information through our Site, please contact us at [email protected].

10. Notification of Changes

We reserve the right to change or update this Privacy Policy at any time. When we make material changes to the terms of this Policy we will provide notice on this page by posting a clear and conspicuous notice on the Site explaining that we are changing our Privacy Policy. All Privacy Policy changes will take effect immediately upon their posting on the Site. Please check the Site periodically for any changes. Your continued use of the Site and/or acceptance of our e-mail communications following the posting of changes to this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of any and all changes.

11. Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, please email us via the Contact Us page on this site, or by sending a letter to HealthInsurance.org, LLC, 5353 Wayzata Boulevard, Suite 300, St. Louis Park, MN 55416.