Oct

19

thriftyscot.co.uk, bikingneeds.com and onlyfinance.com commit the ultimate crime!

Filed Under Insurance Aggregators |

Without sounding like a whining old pensioner …in this day and age, would you go out for the day and leave your front door wide open? Would you leave the car engine running whilst you nipped into the post office on the High Street (without intentions of a quick getaway)? NO! You probably wouldn’t even walk down a dark street on your own anymore.

The online world is no different to the real world. Even the guys in the insurance market (who can create insurance for anything!) have invented an online fraud insurance product. Pants though it may be, it has registered in their minds that not everything is safe online and a risk exists. So why on earth are thriftyscot.co.uk, bikingneeds.com and onlyfinance.com all capturing customers’ personal (very personal) details through an insecure online form? How can they justify doing this?

It’s one thing to fall short of security problems when the average customer is given all the common signs that everything is totally secure (eBay). It’s another thing for the customer to ignore warnings about security certificates, session hijacking and the like, taking the risk into their own hands. But it’s simply another level to be the online offender, pretending to offer the customer a great service and actually leaving their details open to the world because they couldn’t be bothered to make their online form secure!

We’ve recently seen the media pick up on the handling of customer data (something we’ve covered on Insiders View before - Swinton and Its4Me being the main offenders on that occassion). The media highlighted Call Connect, Confused, GoCompare and Performance Direct (seperate issues but all related to the treatment of customer data). Surely Thrifty Scot, Biking Needs and Only Finance are worse offenders (if there is a degree of seperation)?

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12 Comments so far

  1. Ernest on October 22, 2007 1:57 pm

    @George

    I know we have a hell of a lot of lurkers on our blog but it seems as though nobody really cares about the security of their data! Strange really, when you think how much it could cost them.

  2. Creased on October 24, 2007 11:01 pm

    Sorry for the hijack, but how long has GoCompare been #1 for ‘compare car insurance’? I’m not complaining - it must be a good group you’ve got Kev!

  3. MarkE on October 25, 2007 3:05 pm

    And how long have TescoFinance had 1,250,000 links pointing at their car insurance page!!!

  4. Ernest on October 25, 2007 4:08 pm

    @Creased

    It’s always the way. I think every non-SEO post has ended up with an SEO discussion at the end of it!

    @MarkE

    Months and months and months and months. Them and USwitch and MoneyExpert and…

  5. Ernest on October 26, 2007 10:26 am

    Just when you thought Google was catching up with all this link buying, today’s reshuffle on [car insurance] has promoted Endsleigh and Tesco Finance into the top three. Might as well go home now!

  6. Creased on October 26, 2007 10:39 am

    How has Tesco jumped up so much and so quickly without the big G batting an eyelid? Smells a bit off to me!

  7. Rich on October 26, 2007 2:50 pm

    Back in May google looked like it was going to make a stand (MS incident), but they backed down on that very quickly and since then just seem to love the mass link buyers.

    DP ad network still working very well for various companies in the loans/cards/mortgages arena - namely moneyexpert, nortonfinance, moneyweb and powerseeker are the latest to use this tactic on “car insurance”.

    Something has to give…… or does it.

    I find it very amusing though what Kevin talks about with gocompares strategy, especially as he was so vocal of chooseinsurance many months ago - Kevin what are you doing differently to them?

    Apart from pay per post blog entries!

  8. Kevin on October 26, 2007 10:03 pm

    @ Rich

    I think you’ll find that my comments (way back in March) were aimed at Google and not Chooseinsurance. Chooseinsurance are taking advantage of Google’s policing of paid links, in the same way that almost every other company occupying a top 20 positioning on ‘car insurance’ are too.

    You’ll also remember that, at that time, my concerns were that Chooseinsurance’s site was a basic affiliate site, but since their link up with Quotezone, their site now offers real value to the insurance consumer.

  9. Rich on October 29, 2007 10:58 am

    Just spotted another trying the DP network for “car insurance”.

    http://www.nationsfinance.co.uk/insurance/

  10. Rich on October 30, 2007 1:33 pm

    Gocompare’s seo firm is http://www.latitudegroup.com/

  11. Tom on October 30, 2007 3:27 pm

    So Rich if you’re outing other people, who exactly are you? Richard Overvold perhaps? The affiliate spammer who runs fundslender.co.uk? Among other nasty little parasite sites. Perhaps you should not be so outwardly vindictive to those who wish to conseal their identities.

  12. Ernest on October 30, 2007 4:32 pm

    @Rich, @Tom

    I’m less interested in who the two of you work for than I am knowing why Rich may believe that GoCompare works with Latitude? Any foundation or a guess based on techniques, IBL and so on.

    Fret not, we know that Latitude work with Money Expert so it’s not as though they’ll get any more or less coverage on here and it’s not as though they’re an unknown to the insurance world which exposes any huge competitive advantage.

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