I'm in the market for a new policy for a house I bought,
and things seem to have changed since the last time I did
this.

So far, the companies I've queried all insist on both my
social security number and my signature on a release that
permits them to sell all of my personal information.

Is this what purchasing property insurance has come to?
Must I now risk my identity as well as expose myself to
never-ending spam, mail and phone calls from
telemarketers for the privilege of paying in advance for
insurance coverage?

"Jake" wrote in message
...

Is this what purchasing property insurance has come to?
Must I now risk my identity as well as expose myself to
never-ending spam, mail and phone calls from
telemarketers for the privilege of paying in advance for
insurance coverage?

It depends where you live, and you did not post
this information. Where I live:
1. Public laws maintain Do Not Call lists and
provide that tax-related information (e.g. social
insurance number) may not be demanded by
private insurers etc.
2. Insurance underwriters vary with ownership.
Policyholder-owned companies do not pursue
all the commercial opportunities available to
investor-owned or private insurers.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

In article ,
says...
I'm in the market for a new policy for a house I bought,
and things seem to have changed since the last time I did
this.

So far, the companies I've queried all insist on both my
social security number and my signature on a release that
permits them to sell all of my personal information.

Your SSN is used in tracking prior insurance coverage and claims -- the
industry database, CLUE, relies on it as a unique identifier of people
since there isn't any other national standard unique individual ID.

They mostly don't actually want to *sell* your personal information, but
under current privacy laws, they need a fairly broad release in order to
*share* your information within the insurance organization.

Once the underwriters see your claims history and other information from
your application, they need to pass it on to the company that actually
issues the policy. It's almost invisible to the consumer, but most
insurance companies are actually *groups* of insurance *companies*,
offering different types of policies at different prices.

Since the company that issues the policy isn't the same company that
obtained your information originally, the first company needs a release
that allows them to transfer your information to the second company.

--
is Joshua Putnam
http://www.phred.org/~josh/
Updated Infrared Photography Gallery:
http://www.phred.org/~josh/photo/ir.html

On May 30, 8:58 am, "Jake" wrote:
I'm in the market for a new policy for a house I bought,
and things seem to have changed since the last time I did
this.

So far, the companies I've queried all insist on both my
social security number and my signature on a release that
permits them to sell all of my personal information.

Is this what purchasing property insurance has come to?
Must I now risk my identity as well as expose myself to
never-ending spam, mail and phone calls from
telemarketers for the privilege of paying in advance for
insurance coverage?

Yeah, they'll do credit checks and financial checks on you. Every
scrap of evidence they can dig up, gets fed into their risk model.