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Comment by jerrya | Hacker News Reader

It's probably a terrific service and I look forward to using it, but wow, just to get a quote I have to give out enough information to own me good, not just in cyberspace but IRL.

  Name
  DOB
  Address
  Make, model, year of car
  Drivers License
  Optional Social Security
  Sex
  Marital Status
  Student/military affiliation
  Optional Employer
  Optional Professional/Alumni Associations

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It's the same information you'd have to give out to any insurance provider...

That could be -- it's been awhile since I checked.

There does seem to be a bit of chicken and egg barrier though. I may be willing to give out this information to allstate.com or statefarm.com or progressive.com but I am not sure I or others will be as willing to give it out to leaky.com.

Maybe they are awesome, and maybe it's just me, but if you want me to give this information out on the spur of the moment, I guess I would like a site that somehow exudes a bit more trust.

Are you speaking from your perspective, or from the perspective of Random Joe User? The fact that they're YC backed at earns my trust, at least to the extent that they're not planning anything malicious with my data (not necessarily trust that their security is competent).

I'm speaking from my perspective of other's perspectives.

That they are YC backed encouraged me to click and try it out. Otherwise, I would probably not have clicked at all.

(But YC backing isn't really enough for me to eagerly give out all that information, not until pg and yc is providing ebay like yc-clickers-insurance on their portfolio. :) )

Regarding the average user, I suspect that insurance companies have names like Prudential, All State, State Farm, and symbols like the Rock of Gibraltar, big old granite columned buildings, and stuffy images for a reason.

And um, leaky isn't doing it for me.

ymmv

I think you're wrong. For instance, there are health insurance search sites that demand more than this, and there's clearly enough affiliate money in health insurance to keep those things up and running. I think you're probably just a part of a small sliver of the market that is hypersensitive to this stuff.

What is an acceptable outcome for the operators of those sites may not be acceptable for an angel or VC funded startup.

How is that different than esurance.com, a close competitor?

It may not be. I was just going to Progressive which I think does something similar and iirc they say if they can't get you the best quote themselves, they're okay with that.

Otoh, how IS leaky different from esurance? I don't understand that from their website either.

esurance and progressive actually sell insurance. This site appears to be an aggregation who gets revenue through referral bonuses.

But for the users, that wouldn't really matter?

Esurance is an insurance company, leaky is an aggrigator for insurance prices.

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