Privacy Policy

1. Scope of This Policy

1.1 What this Policy covers. This Policy applies to personal information collected through the Site and through inquiries you initiate with us by telephone, text message, email, or mail in connection with the Site.

1.2 What this Policy does not cover. This Policy does not apply to:

1. information collected by any insurance carrier, general agency, field marketing organization, government program (including Medicare and Covered California), or any other third party, whether or not you reached that third party through a link on the Site;
2. nonpublic personal information collected in connection with an application for, or the placement or servicing of, an insurance product, which is governed by the privacy notices we and the carrier provide at that time under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the California Financial Information Privacy Act, and the California Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act; or
3. information about our employees, contractors, and applicants for employment.

1.3 Relationship to other notices. Your use of the Site is also governed by our Terms of Use, which include the way disputes between you and Hopper are resolved. Where a separate privacy notice, disclosure, authorization, or agreement applies to particular information, that document governs that information, and this Policy does not enlarge the rights or obligations it sets out. If this Policy conflicts with a notice that the law requires us to give, the legally required notice controls as to the information it covers.

1.4 Nature of this Policy. This Policy is a statement of our information practices, published to satisfy the California Online Privacy Protection Act and other applicable law. It is not a contract, and it does not create any right, obligation, warranty, or representation in favor of any person beyond those that applicable law independently imposes on us.

2. Definitions

"Personal information" means information that identifies, relates to, describes, or is reasonably capable of being associated with a particular individual or household, to the extent that applicable law treats such information as protected. It does not include information that has been deidentified or aggregated so that it cannot reasonably be linked to you, or information that is lawfully made available to the general public.

"Service provider" means a person or entity that processes personal information on our behalf under terms that restrict its use of that information to the services it performs for us.

"You" means any person who uses the Site or contacts us through it.

3. Personal Information We Collect

3.1 Information you provide to us. We collect the personal information you choose to give us. Depending on how you contact us, this may include:

1. Identifiers and contact details: your name, email address, telephone number, and mailing address.
2. Insurance-related details: where you are in the Medicare enrollment process, when you expect to turn 65 or when existing coverage will end, the month of your 65th birthday, the topic you want to discuss, and your preferred days and times for a call.
3. The content of your communications: anything you write in a free-text field, say in a telephone call or voicemail, or send by text message, email, or mail, together with the date, time, and duration of the communication.
4. Anything else you volunteer, whether or not we asked for it.

3.2 Information collected automatically. When you use the Site, our hosting, content delivery, and security provider automatically receives technical information from your browser or device, including your Internet Protocol address and the approximate location derived from it, browser type and version, operating system, device characteristics, the pages and resources you request, the address of the page that referred you, the dates and times of your requests, and reports your browser generates about connection errors and performance. The provider uses this information to deliver the Site, to detect and mitigate attacks, abuse, and automated traffic, and to operate its network. We may access it, in aggregate or in individual records, for security, troubleshooting, and the investigation of abuse. Our forms also contain hidden fields designed to detect automated submissions; a submission that completes one of those fields is treated as automated and discarded. Separately, and only in your own browser, the Site records how you arrived and counts what is used, as Section 7 describes; that information reaches us only as anonymous counts, or attached to a form you choose to submit.

3.3 Information from other sources. We may receive personal information about you from insurance carriers, general agencies, and other licensed persons in connection with coverage you have applied for or hold; from persons who refer you to us; from publicly available sources; and from government agencies and programs to the extent permitted by law. We may combine that information with information you provide to us.

3.4 Sensitive information, and information we ask you not to send. The forms on the Site do not request, and you must not submit through them or by ordinary email or text message, your Social Security number, Medicare Beneficiary Identifier or other insurance identification number, full date of birth, financial account or payment card numbers, driver's license number, or any information about your health, medical conditions, diagnoses, treatment, prescriptions, or claims. If we need information of that kind to assist you, we will tell you and will arrange an appropriate means of collecting it. If you nonetheless submit such information through the Site, by email, or by text message, you do so on your own initiative and at your own risk, and we may retain, use, or delete it in our discretion consistent with applicable law.

4. How We Use Personal Information

We may use personal information for any purpose permitted by law, including to:

1. respond to your inquiry and communicate with you about it;
2. identify insurance products that may be suitable for you; provide quotes, comparisons, and explanations; and assist you with applications, enrollment, plan changes, renewals, and service requests;
3. contact you by telephone, text message, email, and mail as described in Section 5, including to follow up on an inquiry, to schedule and confirm appointments, and to provide information about insurance products, enrollment periods, and related services that we offer;
4. establish, maintain, and administer our relationship with you, including by keeping records of what you asked, what we told you, and what you decided;
5. comply with the laws, regulations, and regulatory guidance that apply to us, including the record-keeping, scope-of-appointment, disclosure, call-recording, and marketing requirements imposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the California Department of Insurance, and respond to lawful requests from government authorities;
6. detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, unauthorized access, and other unlawful or prohibited activity, and enforce our rights and policies;
7. establish, exercise, or defend legal claims;
8. operate, secure, maintain, analyze, and improve the Site and our business, including through aggregated or deidentified data;
9. evaluate or carry out a merger, acquisition, sale, transfer, or other disposition of all or part of our business or assets; and
10. serve any other purpose disclosed to you at the time of collection or to which you consent.

We may create aggregated or deidentified information from personal information. Aggregated and deidentified information is not personal information, and we may use it for any purpose.

5. Consent to Be Contacted

5.1 Your request for contact. Every form on the Site exists so that a licensed insurance agent can contact you. By submitting a form, or by providing your telephone number or email address to us by any other means, you request that we contact you, and you expressly consent to receive communications from us by telephone call, voicemail, text message, email, and mail at the contact points you provide, concerning your inquiry, Medicare and other insurance products and enrollment periods, appointments, and related matters. Communications from us are a solicitation for insurance.

5.2 The notice on our forms. The following notice appears directly above the button on every form on the Site, and clicking the button is your agreement to it:

By clicking the button below, you request that Hopper Insurance Services, Inc. contact you, and you expressly consent to receive calls, text messages, and emails from a Licensed Sales Agent at the telephone number and email address you provide, even if the number is on a federal or state Do Not Call list, including through automated technology or a prerecorded voice, to discuss information about Medicare Insurance Plans and other insurance products. Consent is not a condition of purchase. Message and data rates may apply; reply STOP to end text messages. You agree to our Terms of Use, including its provisions for mediation, binding individual arbitration, and waiver of class actions and jury trial, and you acknowledge our Privacy Policy. This is a solicitation for insurance.

When you submit a form, our record of the submission includes the date and time, the page it was submitted from, the wording of the notice displayed, and the arrival information described in Section 7.2, and we keep that record as evidence of your consent.

5.3 Telephone and text messaging. You represent that you are the subscriber to, or the customary user of, each telephone number you provide, and that you are authorized to consent to communications at that number. You agree to notify us promptly if you stop using a number you have given us. The notice in Section 5.2 is your prior express written consent, and we may deliver calls and text messages using automated dialing or texting technology or an artificial or prerecorded voice; consent to marketing calls or text messages delivered by such means is not a condition of purchasing any property, goods, or services. Your request for contact permits us to call you for the period the law allows even if your number appears on a federal or state do-not-call registry. Standard message and data rates charged by your carrier apply to text messages, and the terms in Section 6 also apply.

5.4 Call recording and monitoring. Telephone calls with us may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance, training, compliance, and record-keeping. Federal Medicare marketing rules require certain calls with Medicare beneficiaries to be recorded and retained. Where the law requires notice, we will inform you at the outset of a call that it is being recorded, and by continuing the call you consent to the recording.

5.5 How to stop. You may withdraw your consent to marketing communications at any time: reply "STOP" to any text message from us; use the unsubscribe mechanism in, or reply to, any marketing email; or call or write to us and ask to be placed on our internal do-not-call list. We will honor a withdrawal within the time permitted by law. Withdrawing consent to marketing does not stop communications that are transactional, that relate to coverage you have applied for or hold, or that we are required by law to send, and it does not affect the lawfulness of communications made before we processed your request. We keep a record of your opt-out so that we can honor it.

5.6 Electronic communications. You consent to receive notices, disclosures, and other communications from us electronically, including by email and by posting on the Site, and you agree that electronic communications satisfy any legal requirement that a communication be in writing. You are responsible for keeping the contact details you give us accurate and current.

6. Text Messaging Terms

6.1 Program disclosure. The following disclosure applies to every telephone number you provide to us:

By providing my phone number to “Hopper Insurance Services”, I agree and acknowledge that “Hopper Insurance Services” may send text messages to my wireless phone number for any purpose. Message and data rates may apply. Message frequency will vary, and you will be able to opt out by replying “STOP”, assistance can be found by texting “HELP”. For more information on how your data will be handled please visit: https://www.hopperinsuranceservices.com/contact-us/privacy-policy/

6.2 Additional terms. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to cancel and HELP for assistance at any time; you may also obtain help by calling (805) 966-4900 or by emailing [email protected]. Wireless carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. Text messaging may be unavailable in some areas or with some carriers. Text messages from us may include replies to your inquiries, appointment scheduling and reminders, follow-ups to calls and voicemails, and, where you have consented, informational and promotional messages about insurance products and enrollment periods.

6.3 Mobile information is not shared for marketing. No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are not shared with any third party, and are excluded from every category of disclosure described in Section 8.

7. Cookies, Tracking Technologies, and Do Not Track

7.1 No third-party tracking. The Site does not set cookies, does not run any third-party analytics service, and carries no advertising, social media, or other tracking pixels. The Site does not load fonts, scripts, images, style sheets, frames, or any other content from any company other than Hopper and its hosting provider; the typefaces the Site uses are served from the Site itself. No advertising platform, social network, or data broker learns that you visited the Site, or which pages you read, because your browser loaded them.

7.2 First-party arrival record. When you first arrive, the Site stores in your own browser, and nowhere else, the address of the page you landed on, the website that referred you if your browser reports one, the date, and any campaign or advertising identifiers that were part of the address you used (for example, utm parameters or the click identifiers that Google, Meta, and Microsoft attach to advertisement links). If you later arrive through another advertisement, the most recent identifiers are stored as well. This record expires after ninety days, contains nothing that identifies you, is never read by anyone but this Site, and reaches us only if you submit a form, when it is attached to your submission so that we know which advertising brought you to us. We may report a conversion back to the advertising platform that supplied a click identifier, using that identifier and nothing that identifies you, so that the platform can measure its own advertisement; no such report is made from your browser.

7.3 First-party measurement. The Site counts page views and a short list of actions (a telephone number or email address tapped, a link to another website followed, a form submitted and whether it was delivered, and whether a page was read to the end). Each count carries the page, the referring website's origin, the campaign identifiers in Section 7.2 if any, a coarse screen size, and the country your connection appears to come from. It carries no cookie, no identifier, no Internet Protocol address, and nothing you typed. These counts are sent only to this Site's own address and are kept by us, in a form that cannot be linked to any person, to understand which pages are read and which advertising works. Our hosting provider may additionally provide us with cookieless, aggregate statistics about visits to the Site, collected by a script it serves for that purpose and containing no identifier.

7.4 Hosting and security provider. Our hosting, content delivery, and security provider may set cookies, insert scripts served from our own domain, and collect the technical information described in Section 3.2 as necessary to deliver the Site, to defend it against attacks and automated traffic, and to operate its network, and it may receive automated reports from your browser about connection errors and performance. Those activities are part of delivering the Site to you and are governed by the provider's own terms.

7.5 Changes. We reserve the right to introduce cookies, third-party analytics, advertising measurement, or similar technologies in the future. If we do, we will update this Policy to describe them and will provide any notice, choice, or opt-out the law then requires.

7.6 Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. Because the Site does not track visitors across third-party websites, keeps no identifier that could follow you over time, and we do not sell or share personal information, browser "Do Not Track" and Global Privacy Control signals have nothing to switch off, and the Site does not respond to them. If we ever sell or share personal information in a manner that the law makes subject to such signals, we will honor them as the law requires.

7.7 Third-party tracking. No third party collects personal information about your online activities over time and across different websites when you use the Site.

8. Disclosure of Personal Information

8.1 No sale, sharing, or third-party marketing. We do not sell personal information. We do not share personal information with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for those third parties' own direct marketing purposes. We are not a lead generator, and we do not sell, rent, trade, or otherwise provide your inquiry to lead purchasers, data brokers, advertisers, or other insurance agencies.

8.2 Disclosures we may make. We may disclose personal information, for the purposes described in Section 4, to the following categories of recipients:

1. Service providers, including providers of website hosting, content delivery, and security services; business email and productivity services; telephone, voicemail, and text messaging services; information technology, document management, and data storage services; and accounting, professional, and administrative services. Service providers are permitted to use personal information only to perform services for us and as required by law.
2. Insurance carriers, general agencies, field marketing organizations, and other licensed persons, and their agents and service providers, as necessary to quote, underwrite, place, enroll, service, renew, or change coverage that you request or hold, to receive compensation for that business, and to comply with the requirements they impose on us.
3. Government agencies, regulators, and law enforcement, including the California Department of Insurance and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and courts, arbitrators, and parties to legal proceedings, where disclosure is required by law, subpoena, court order, regulatory request, or audit, or where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to comply with a legal obligation.
4. Professional advisers, including attorneys, accountants, auditors, compliance consultants, and our own insurers, under duties of confidentiality.
5. Successors and assigns. If we sell, transfer, or merge all or part of our business, assets, or book of business, undergo a reorganization, bankruptcy, or similar event, or evaluate any such transaction, personal information may be disclosed to the prospective or actual counterparty and transferred as part of the transaction, subject to applicable law.
6. Any person, where we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of Hopper, our clients, our personnel, or the public; to detect, prevent, or address fraud, security, or technical issues; or to enforce this Policy or our other rights.
7. Any person you direct us to disclose to, or to whom you consent to disclosure, including family members and other representatives you identify.
8. Any other recipient to whom disclosure is permitted or required by applicable law, including the disclosures permitted without authorization under the California Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act.

8.3 Aggregated and deidentified information. We may disclose aggregated or deidentified information for any purpose.

9. How Your Submissions Reach Us, and Where They Are Kept

9.1 Website forms. When you submit a form on the Site, the submission, together with the record described in Section 5.2, is encrypted in transit and delivered by a program running with our hosting provider directly to our business email account, where it is read by our licensed agents and staff. Our hosting provider is configured to transmit submissions and not to store them on our behalf. If a submission cannot be delivered, the Site tells you so and asks you to call; a submission that is not delivered has not been received by us.

9.2 Telephone, voicemail, and text. Calls, voicemails, and text messages to and from our office are carried and stored by our telephone and messaging service provider as part of providing that service. The contents of a voicemail or text message therefore reside with that provider as well as with us.

9.3 Business records. Once received, your information is kept in our business email system, in the notes and files our agents maintain about your inquiry and any coverage we assist you with, and in the systems of the carriers and other parties described in Section 8.2(b) to the extent it is disclosed to them.

9.4 Location of processing. We are located in California and process personal information in the United States. Our service providers may process information at facilities in the United States or elsewhere. By using the Site or contacting us, you consent to the processing of your personal information in the United States.

10. Retention

We retain personal information for as long as we consider it reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, and thereafter for as long as we consider necessary or prudent to:

1. comply with the record-keeping requirements that apply to us as a California insurance licensee and as an agent for Medicare products, which require insurance transaction and marketing records to be preserved for multi-year periods after the transaction or the end of the relationship;
2. satisfy the audit, contractual, and compensation requirements of the insurance carriers and other parties we work with;
3. resolve disputes, establish, exercise, or defend legal claims, and enforce our rights, for the duration of the applicable limitations periods; and
4. honor your requests, including your opt-out and do-not-call preferences, which we keep for as long as necessary to honor them.

An inquiry that does not result in a client relationship is retained for as long as we consider reasonably necessary to respond to it and to document our response, and may thereafter remain in our records and backups until it is deleted in the ordinary course. Retention periods are determined in our discretion consistent with applicable law. Information removed from active systems may persist in backup systems for a period before it is overwritten. We may retain deidentified or aggregated information indefinitely.

11. Security

We maintain administrative, technical, and physical safeguards that we consider reasonable and appropriate to the nature of the personal information we hold, as California Civil Code section 1798.81.5 requires. The Site is served only over encrypted connections, and form submissions are encrypted in transit. However, no method of transmission over the Internet and no method of electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot and do not warrant or guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us or that we hold. Email and text messages are not secure channels, and you should not use them to send the information described in Section 3.4. You are responsible for the security of your own devices, accounts, and networks. If a breach of the security of your personal information occurs, we will notify you and any authorities as, when, and in the manner applicable law requires.

12. Your Privacy Rights

12.1 Rights under California insurance privacy law. We are a licensee subject to the California Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act (California Insurance Code section 791 and following). Under that Act, and subject to its exceptions, an individual whose recorded personal information we hold in connection with an insurance transaction may, by a written request that reasonably identifies the information sought, obtain access to that information, learn the identity of the persons to whom we have disclosed it within the period the Act specifies, and request that it be corrected, amended, or deleted. We will respond within the time the Act allows, may charge a reasonable fee for copies where the Act permits, and may decline to disclose information that the Act excepts from access, including information collected in connection with, or in reasonable anticipation of, a claim or a civil or criminal proceeding. If we decline a request for correction, you may file a concise statement of what you believe to be correct, which we will keep with the information as the Act provides.

12.2 Rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act. The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (together, the "CCPA"), applies only to businesses that meet statutory thresholds based on annual revenue or on the volume of personal information they buy, sell, or share. We do not believe that we currently meet any of those thresholds, and this Policy does not create CCPA rights where the statute does not confer them. To the extent the CCPA applies to us and to particular information, California residents have the following rights, subject to the CCPA's exemptions (including those for information subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the California Financial Information Privacy Act, and the California Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act) and to verification:

1. to know the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about them, the categories of sources, the purposes of collection, and the categories of third parties to whom it has been disclosed;
2. to request deletion of personal information we collected from them, subject to the exceptions the CCPA allows, including where retention is necessary to complete a transaction, comply with a legal obligation, or exercise or defend legal claims;
3. to request correction of inaccurate personal information;
4. to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, and to limit the use of sensitive personal information, neither of which we engage in; and
5. not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

For purposes of the CCPA's disclosure requirements: in the preceding twelve months we have collected the categories of personal information described in Section 3 from the sources described there, used it for the purposes described in Section 4, disclosed it for business purposes to the categories of recipients described in Section 8.2, and have not sold or shared personal information. We do not have actual knowledge that we sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16 years of age.

12.3 Direct marketing disclosures. California Civil Code section 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about disclosures of personal information to third parties for those third parties' direct marketing purposes. We make no such disclosures.

12.4 Other jurisdictions. The Site is directed to residents of California. If you reside elsewhere, we extend privacy rights to you only to the extent that the law of your jurisdiction requires of us.

12.5 How to exercise your rights. Submit requests in writing to Hopper Insurance Services, Inc., 1221 State Street, Suite 204, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, or by email to [email protected], or call (805) 966-4900 during office hours, Monday to Thursday, 10am to 3pm. State clearly that you are making a privacy request, identify the right you are exercising, and provide enough information for us to locate your records and to verify your identity. We will respond within the time applicable law requires.

12.6 Verification. Before acting on a request, we must be reasonably certain that the person making it is the person the information concerns, or that person's authorized representative. We will match the information you provide against information we already hold, such as the name, email address, and telephone number from which your inquiry came, and we may require additional information, a signed declaration under penalty of perjury, or, for a request made through an authorized agent, written proof of the agent's authority and direct confirmation from you. We may deny, in whole or in part, any request that we cannot verify, that is manifestly unfounded, excessive, or repetitive, or that falls within an exemption, and we will state the basis for a denial to the extent the law requires. We will not ask for more information than the request reasonably requires, and we will use information provided for verification only for that purpose.

12.7 No discrimination. We will not deny you service, charge you a different price, or provide a different level or quality of service because you exercised a privacy right, except as the law permits.

13. Health Information

The Site is not designed to collect protected health information, and Section 3.4 asks you not to submit health, medical, or prescription information through it. Nothing in this Policy is a representation that we are, or are not, a covered entity or a business associate under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act with respect to any particular engagement. Where that Act applies to information we hold, that Act governs that information, and this Policy does not expand the obligations it imposes. Information you choose to submit through the Site before any insurance relationship exists between us is handled under this Policy and under any other law that applies to it.

14. Children

The Site is intended for adults and is not directed to persons under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and we do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16. By using the Site or submitting information to us, you represent that you are at least 18 years old. If you believe that a child has provided personal information to us, contact us and we will delete it as the law requires.

15. Third-Party Websites

The Site contains links to websites operated by others, including insurance carriers, Medicare.gov, Covered California, and other government and reference sites. We do not control those websites, we are not responsible for their content or their privacy practices, and a link is not an endorsement. Their privacy policies, not this one, govern any information you provide to them.

16. No Advice or Relationship Created

The Site provides general information about insurance products and is not insurance, legal, tax, financial, or medical advice. Using the Site or submitting an inquiry does not make you our client, does not bind, place, or guarantee any coverage, does not create an agent-client, fiduciary, or confidential relationship, and does not impose on us any duty beyond those the law independently imposes. We may decline to respond to any inquiry, may discard submissions that we believe to be automated, fraudulent, abusive, incomplete, or outside the areas we serve, and may restrict access to the Site from any source, in our discretion.

17. Changes to This Policy

We may change this Policy at any time and in our discretion. When we do, we will post the revised Policy on the Site and update the effective date shown at the top of it. That posting is our notice to you of the change, including any material change. We may, but are not required to, give additional notice by other means. Changes take effect when posted unless the revised Policy states otherwise, and your use of the Site or submission of information after a revised Policy is posted constitutes your acknowledgment of it. Check this page periodically.

18. Governing Law, Limitation of Liability, and General Terms

18.1 Governing law, disputes, and venue. This Policy, and any dispute concerning it or our handling of personal information, are governed by the laws of the State of California and applicable federal law, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any such dispute is subject to Section 11 of our Terms of Use, which requires negotiation, then mediation, then binding individual arbitration, and waives class actions and jury trials, to the fullest extent permitted by law. For any matter those Terms permit to be brought in court, the state and federal courts located in Santa Barbara County, California have exclusive jurisdiction, and you consent to that jurisdiction.

18.2 Limitation of liability. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Hopper and its officers, directors, employees, and agents will not be liable for any unauthorized access to, interception of, alteration of, or misuse of information transmitted over the Internet or by email or text message; for the acts or omissions of third parties, including service providers, insurance carriers, telecommunications and wireless carriers, and the operators of linked websites; or for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages arising out of or relating to the Site or this Policy. Nothing in this Policy limits any liability that cannot be limited under applicable law.

18.3 General. If any provision of this Policy is held invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the remaining provisions will remain in effect. Section headings are for convenience only. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it. This Policy, together with any notice provided to you at the time information is collected, is our complete statement of our privacy practices with respect to the Site and supersedes all earlier versions.

19. Contact Us

Direct privacy requests and questions to the address below and identify them as privacy matters. You may also use the contact page and include the word "privacy" in your message.