IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION.

Hey, remember this from back in early January?

Earlier this evening I received the following email. I'm not including the sender's identifying information for obvious reasons:

Someone from this website contacted me to help with enrolling in health insurance. They created an account on healthcare.gov with an id of XXXXXXXX@acasignup.net instead of my email address and did not give me the password. I am trying to make some changes to my healthcare coverage and update my information.

I am very concerned with the safety of my information. I thought they were from the health insurance marketplace.

If you could change my id to my email and give me the password I would very much appreciate it.

If not I will assume you are an identity thief and contact the FBI.

Needless to say, I've already written this person back to assure them that a) No, I'm not an identity thief; b) No, I'm not the one who contacted them (and there's no one else "at" ACASignups.net to do so anyway); c) No, neither my server nor my site has has been hacked, and there's no email account or forwarder at the address they provided; and d) They absolutely should contact the appropriate authorities, although my recommendation would be to contact the fraud department at HC.gov first before going to the FBI.

As it turned out, the key to this mystery is that the website they were referring to was acasignup.net, not acasignupS.net (with an "s" at the end). Fortunately, the guy got in touch with the folks at the other website, they turned out to be legitimate after all and all is well:

Hello,

Yes it was the other website. I have been in contact with them over this issue. I wish to apologize for my rude behavior to you, but I was concerned that I had exposed myself. The issue has been resolved as I was able to get my password and setup my health insurance for my family of four for 171.31 per month, much better than the over 500 per month in 2014. Thank you for your quick responses on this issue.

Good for him. Unfortunately, it's happened again, several times, since then, although only the most recent one was specifically from acasignup.net; the others were just people emailing me wanting to sign up, so I pointed them towards HC.gov.

Anyway, I just wanted to clarify, once again:

  • I am not an insurance broker.
  • I am not an insurance agent.
  • I am not an ACA Navigator.
  • I am not an insurance company.
  • I am not a healthcare exchange or marketplace.

Most importantly (this one seems to be a common mistake):

  • I AM NOT THE HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES DEPT. OF THE UNITED STATES.

That is all.

Advertisement