Privacy & Social Media Policies

Introduction

Welcome! The following websites (collectively, “Site”) are owned and managed by the California Earthquake Authority (“CEA”, "we", "us", or "our"):

• Earthquake Authority
• Agent Portal
• California Wildfire Fund

CEA offers earthquake insurance policies exclusively through our participating residential insurance companies (“Participating Insurers”); CEA is also the Administrator for the California Wildfire Fund. 

Privacy Policy

Last Updated: July 1, 2024

Your privacy is important to us. This Privacy Policy (“Policy”): 

1. applies to visitors to this Site and users of insurance products (collectively referred to as a “user”, “you”, or “your”) made available by us, including CEA earthquake insurance (the “Services”), subject to any limitations described in this Policy; and
2. explains what information we collect from users of our Site and Services that may be used to personally identify you (“Personal Information”) and how we use it.

We reserve the right to change this Policy at any time. We will notify you of any changes to this Policy by posting a new Policy to this page. You are responsible for periodically reviewing this Policy to check for any changes. Changes to this Policy are effective when they are posted on this page. You acknowledge that your continued use of our Site and our Services after we publish changes to this Policy means that the collection, use, and sharing of your Personal Information is subject to the updated Policy.

This Policy does not apply to websites, apps, products, or services that we do not own or control, including the websites, apps, products, and/or services of our third-party Participating Insurers and the separate joint-powers-authority entity known as the California Residential Mitigation Program ("CRMP") of which we are a member. This means that this Policy does not explain what our Participating Insurers or CRMP do with your Personal Information that they collect directly from you. We encourage you to review their respective privacy policies for more information about their practices.  In addition, this Policy does not modify the terms of any CEA insurance policies approved by the California Department of Insurance and issued to customers. In the event of a conflict between this Policy and the terms of a CEA-issued insurance policy, the insurance policy will govern and control.

1. What Information Do We Collect?

We may collect different types of Personal Information from you depending on how you use or interact with our Site or Services:

1.1 When you access our Site, we may collect and process certain technical information (“Technical Information”) about your use of our Site, such as:

• Web browser that you use.
• Type of operating system that you use.
• IP addresses.
• Links that you use to arrive at, or connect to or from, our Site.
• Cookies that may uniquely identify your browser information.
• Number and frequency of visits to our Site and its pages.

1.2 Information you give us, which is Personal Information that you intentionally provide to us. Examples are:

• Housing information, such as the type, age, address, or other attributes of your residence, and residential insurance information, such as the name of your residential insurance provider and the insured value of your residence, all in connection with your optional use of CEA’s Premium Calculator function.
• Contact information, such as your name, address, telephone number, email address, residential insurance information, employer (solely for users who contact us in connection with their work for a Participating Insurer), or other Personal Information you provide to us in connection with your optional use of our “Contact Us” function, training registration forms, and other optional Site functions.
• Other information you provide when communicating with us or that you otherwise voluntarily provide to us.

1.3 Information we receive from our Participating Insurers that is necessary for us to perform our Services. If you purchase a CEA earthquake insurance policy or a residential insurance policy from one of our Participating Insurers, that Participating Insurer shares with us certain information about you, which is Personal Information that you intentionally provide to the Participating Insurer and to us if you have purchased a CEA earthquake insurance policy. You may wish to contact your residential insurance provider directly for more details.

2. How Do We Use Your Personal Information?

We will use the information we collect from you for the following purposes:

• As necessary for legitimate business purposes related to our Site, Services, or a combination of those.
• Delivering and improving our Site and Services, and your overall experience.
• Responding to your requests for information.
• Pooling your Technical Information with that of others to derive business statistics for our legitimate business purposes.
• Analyzing how you use the Site to help us understand traffic patterns and know if there is a problem with the Site.
• Protecting, investigating, and deterring against fraudulent, unauthorized, or illegal activity.
• Identify Services that may be of interest to you and use targeted advertising to promote the Services.
• As required by law or in responding to legal process.
• Protecting our users, other individual lives, and/or the rights or property of CEA.
• Maintaining the security of the Site and our Services.
• For any other purpose with your consent.

3. Do We Share Your Personal Information?

In addition to the specific situations discussed elsewhere in this Policy, we disclose Personal Information in the following circumstances:

• With third parties that perform services to support our core business functions and internal operations, which may include our policy processing software provider, database administrators, cloud computing services, data processors, advertising services, application services providers, and our print/mail services provider (the latter, solely in support of our program of alternative delivery of a Participating Insurer’s earthquake insurance marketing documents under California Insurance Code Section 10089.42).
• To support our audit, compliance, and corporate governance functions.
• If we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation, or disclosure of such Information is reasonably necessary to detect or protect against fraud or security issues.
• If required or permitted by applicable law or regulation, including laws and regulations of the United States and other countries, or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) comply with a legal obligation or in response to a request from law enforcement or other public authorities wherever CEA may do business; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of CEA; (c) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users, customers, and contractors/employees of CEA or others; or (d) enforce our Terms of Use or otherwise protect against any legal liability.
• With your consent or at your direction.

4. Do We Use Tracking Technologies?

Some of the features on the Site may require the use of “cookies” - small text files that are stored on your device’s hard drive. You may delete and block all cookies from our Site, but parts of the Site may not work. The following sets out how we may use different categories of cookies and your options for managing cookie settings:

Our third-party analytics services providers may use cookies and other tracking technologies to collect and store Technical Information to be used for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy. Examples include:

• Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to help collect and analyze certain information for the analytics purposes discussed in this Policy. You may opt out of the use of cookies by Google Analytics.
• GoSquared: We use GoSquared to help collect and analyze certain information for the analytics purposes discussed in this Policy. Please see the GoSquared Privacy Policy for more information.
• HotJar: We use HotJar to help us better understand our users’ experience (e.g., how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. For further details, please see Hotjar’s privacy policy. You can opt-out of Hotjar’s storing of data about your usage of our Site and Hotjar’s use of tracking cookies on other websites.

Our third-party advertising service providers may use web beacons to recognize you to collect information about your visit and your interaction with our ads. If you would like more information about this and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please visit: the Digital Advertising Alliance’s website, or the Network Advertising Initiative’s website. If you opt-out of interest-based ads, you will still see ads on websites you visit, but those ads will not be based on your browsing behavior.

5. Information Security

Personal Information may be stored, processed, and transferred by CEA in compliance with this Policy. Currently, we store your Personal Information on secure servers located in the United States. We reserve the right to store, process, or transfer your Personal Information as needed, including to offices or third parties residing or working outside of the United States. By your use of this Site or our Services, and your submission of Personal Information to us either directly or through our Participating Insurers, you agree, with a waiver of any future notice, to the storing, processing, and transferring of your Personal Information by CEA.

We have adopted reasonable security measures to protect your Personal Information against loss, misuse, disclosure, destruction, and alteration. These measures include firewalls and encryption, internal reviews of our data collection, storage, and processing practices and security measures, as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to our systems. Our employees, as well as our contractors and agents who access Personal Information, are bound by confidentiality obligations. However, we are unable to guarantee that all of these measures will prevent the unauthorized access, inappropriate use, or compromise of your Personal Information under all circumstances.

6. How We Respond to Do Not Track Signals

Your browser settings may allow you to automatically transmit a Do Not Track signal to websites and other online services you visit. We do not alter our practices when we receive a Do Not Track signal from a visitor’s browser. Find out more about Do Not Track.

7. Children Under 16

The Site is not directed to individuals who are under the age of sixteen (16) and we do not solicit nor knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of sixteen (16). If you believe that we have unknowingly collected any Personal Information from someone under the age of sixteen (16), please contact us immediately and the information will be deleted.

8. Links to Third Parties

This Site may contain links to a number of external websites that we believe may offer useful information. This Privacy Policy does not apply to other websites, and you should contact any external websites directly for information on their privacy, security, data collection, and distribution policies. We are not responsible for the content, use, or misuse of any information provided or collected on any external websites.

9. Managing Your Privacy

If you would like for us to update, correct, delete, or deactivate any information that you have provided to us, please send your request to us at InfoSec@calquake.com and we will endeavor to process your request within a reasonable period after receipt.

10. General Information/Contact Us

We reserve the right to update this Policy from time to time, in which case, the updated Policy will be made available on this page. By continuing to use the Site or Services after we publish any changes to this Policy, you are consenting to the changes and agree to be bound by them.

We review our compliance with this Policy and with applicable U.S. and California laws governing your privacy. We are committed to resolving complaints about your privacy and our collection and use of your Personal Information.

Please contact us with any questions or comments you have regarding our Policy or your Personal Information so that we may promptly address your concerns.

• InfoSec@calquake.com

Social Media Policy & Guidelines

Last Updated: August 5, 2019

Below are two separate social-media policies: one for CEA’s Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages; and the other for CEA’s advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

CEA Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn Pages

Community Guidelines

The purpose of CEA’s social media pages is to provide information about CEA and earthquakes in general and to increase awareness of earthquake safety and earthquake insurance. We encourage users to submit their questions, comments, and concerns either on the social posts themselves or by direct message on the relevant site, but ask that users abide by our Community Guidelines. For your own security and protection, please do not post information about your CEA policy or your other insurance coverage, or about any insurance claims you may have; contact the CEA participating insurer that services your CEA policy directly if you have any policy- or claim-related questions about your CEA insurance coverage.

CEA will endeavor to monitor user comments during regular business hours and reserves the right to remove or restrict any content that is inconsistent with these guidelines. Above all, we request that all visitors engage in respectful and relevant discussions. We further request that users refrain from posting any of the following:

• Private or personal information, including any home addresses, home or cell phone numbers, personal email addresses, or any account names or numbers or similar information.
• Abusive or threatening language.
• Obscene or pornographic material.
• Unlawful actions or language likely to incite lawless action.
• Material that the user does not have the right to post, such as material that infringes upon another’s copyright or trademark.
• Spam or links to other sites. Comments that promote particular services, or products.

Users who repeatedly violate these Community Guidelines may be blocked from CEA’s page at CEA’s discretion. CEA does not discriminate against any views or positions.

The user comments expressed on this site do not reflect the opinions and positions of CEA or its officers and employees. CEA does not warrant the accuracy of any user content. If there are any questions about the operation of these social media pages, please contact us by direct message on the specific social media site page.

Links to each of our social media sites can be found at the bottom of this webpage.

Please note that our Community Guidelines may change from time to time.

CEA Advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Commenting & Posting Policies

CEA purchases advertisements on social media sites such as Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn from time to time, in order to promote CEA’s brand, presence, and products and to encourage customers to purchase earthquake insurance policies from CEA. While Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn allows users to like, comment on, and share such advertisements, CEA does not intend for its commercial advertisements to become an open public forum for the discussion of any and all topics.

User comments to CEA’s social media advertisements shall be limited to those that are relevant to the nature of the advertisement and shall comply with these Commenting & Posting Policies. For your own security and protection, please do not post information about your CEA policy or your other insurance coverage, or about any insurance claims you may have; contact the CEA participating insurer that services your CEA policy directly if you have any policy- or claim-related questions about your CEA insurance coverage. CEA will endeavor to monitor user comments during regular business hours and will remove or restrict any content that is inconsistent with these policies. Above all, we request that all users engage in respectful and relevant discussions. CEA will remove or restrict postings that contain any of the following:

• Private or personal information, including any home addresses, home or cell phone numbers, personal email addresses, or any account names or numbers or similar information.
• Abusive or threatening language.
• Obscene or pornographic material.
• Unlawful actions or language likely to incite lawless action.
• Material that the user does not have the right to post, such as material that infringes upon another’s copyright or trademark.
• Statements that are false, misleading, or dishonest.
• Clearly off-topic comments.
• Spam or links to other sites.
• Comments that promote particular services, or products. Material that is disruptive or harmful to the forum.

Users who repeatedly violate these Community Guidelines may be blocked from CEA’s page at CEA’s discretion. CEA does not discriminate against any views or positions. The user comments expressed on this site do not reflect the opinions and positions of CEA or its officers and employees. CEA does not warrant the accuracy of any user content. If there are any questions about the operation of this site, please contact us by direct message on the specific social media site page.

Links to each of our social media sites can be found at the bottom of this webpage. Please note that our Commenting & Posting Policies may change from time to time.