Privacy policy
Effective June 2026 · Last updated June 2026
This page explains what information The Insurance Guide collects, why, and what your choices are. The most important thing to know up front: if you choose to be contacted, we sell and shareyour contact details and calculator inputs with a licensed insurance agent or agency in our partner network so they can follow up about coverage. We’ve written this in plain language rather than legal boilerplate. If anything is unclear, email privacy@theinsurance.guide.
Who we are
The Insurance Guide (theinsurance.guide) is an independent, privately operated website. We are not HealthCare.gov, not a government agency, and not affiliated with any state marketplace. We publish ACA subsidy estimates and educational content built from public CMS data, and we refer interested people to licensed insurance agents. We do not sell insurance, enroll anyone, or give advice on specific plans.
Categories of personal information we collect
When you use the subsidy calculator, you enter inputs used to compute your estimate: your ZIP code, the ages of household members, your household size, and your estimated annual income. If you choose to unlock full plan-by-plan results or otherwise ask to be contacted, we also collect your email address and, optionally, a phone number, along with a record of the exact consent language you accepted and the time you accepted it.
In CCPA terms these fall under “identifiers” (email, phone), “commercial / demographic information” (ZIP, ages, household size, income), and “internet activity” (the request metadata your browser sends). We do notcollect health conditions, Social Security numbers, government IDs, precise geolocation, or any category CCPA treats as “sensitive” personal information. Income is ordinary personal information, not sensitive data.
Source of the information: all of it comes directly from you, the consumer, as you enter it. We do not buy or ingest personal information about you from data brokers or other third parties.
Business and commercial purposes
We use this information to: (1) compute and show your subsidy and plan-cost estimate; (2) with your consent, refer you to a licensed insurance agent or agency who may contact you about coverage; (3) keep a record of your consent so we can prove it was given and honor any revocation; (4) prevent spam and abuse of the forms; and (5) meet our legal and compliance obligations. We do not use your information for advertising or to build a profile of you. Separately, we use analytics (Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity) to understand site usage and improve the site, as described under “Cookies, analytics, and cross-site tracking” below; we do not sell analytics data.
How we sell and share your information
Plainly: when you give consent to be contacted, your contact details (email and any phone number) and your calculator inputs (ZIP, ages, household size, income) are sold and shared with a licensed insurance agent or agency in The Insurance Guide’s partner network. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act this is a “sale” and a “share” of personal information, even though our fee does not depend on whether you buy anything. We are telling you this directly so there is no surprise.
Categories of recipients: licensed insurance agents and agencies in our partner network, authorized to do business in your state. The named partners are (or will be) listed on our Partners page. We also use a small number of service providers strictly to operate the site (for example, our hosting and email-delivery providers); those providers process data only on our instructions and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes, so that is not a sale.
We do not sell or share your information with anyone other than the licensed partner(s) described in the consent you accept. If you only use the calculator for an estimate and never ask to be contacted, nothing is sold, shared, or stored.
How long we keep it
Calculator inputs (ZIP, ages, household size, income): not retained beyond your session if you only run an estimate. They are stored only if you submit a lead, in which case they are kept as part of that lead record.
Lead records (email, phone, inputs, and the consent record): kept while the referral relationship is active and for as long as we are required to retain proof of consent and the referral under applicable law, then deleted. We do not hold lead data indefinitely.
Opt-out and deletion requests: retained as long as needed to honor your request and to show we did.
Your privacy rights
Depending on where you live, you have the right to: know and access the personal information we hold about you; delete it; correct it; and opt out of the sale or sharingof your personal information. Exercising any of these rights will never count against you, and we don’t charge for it.
How to exercise them (at least two ways):
- Use our Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information page to opt out of sale/sharing, revoke contact consent, or request deletion.
- Email privacy@theinsurance.guide with your request and the email address you provided.
- Reply STOP to any text message to stop further texts immediately.
We may need to verify your identity, usually by matching the email you give us against the record we hold, before completing a deletion request. We will confirm receipt and act within the time the law requires.
Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
We honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC). If your browser or a browser extension sends a GPC opt-out signal when you submit a form, we treat it as a request to opt out of the sale and sharing of your personal information and act on it automatically. You don’t have to do anything else.
Browsers also send a “Do Not Track” signal that has no agreed standard meaning. Where we can act on a clear signal, we do: a Global Privacy Control signal both opts you out of the sale and sharing of your personal information and stops Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity from loading at all. We do not track you across other companies’ websites for advertising.
Cookies, analytics, and cross-site tracking
We use two analytics services to understand how people use the site so we can improve it: Google Analytics (provided by Google) and Microsoft Clarity(provided by Microsoft). These set cookies and similar identifiers in your browser and collect usage data such as the pages you view, an approximate location derived from your IP address, your device and browser type, the link that referred you, and how you move through the site. Microsoft Clarity also records anonymized session replays and heatmaps (mouse movement, clicks, and scrolling); it masks text and form inputs by default, so the contact and calculator details you type are not captured in those recordings. We use this only to understand and improve the site (never for advertising or to build a profile of you), and we do not sell analytics data.
Analytics run by default, but you control them. Use the Accept / Decline notice shown on your first visit (or the Cookie settingslink in the footer at any time) to turn them off, and if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal we do not load them at all. Aside from these analytics, we do not run advertising trackers and do not track your activity across other companies’ websites for advertising.
Contact and changes
Questions or requests about this policy or any data we hold: privacy@theinsurance.guide. We review this policy at least once a year and will update the “last updated” date above when it changes.