Site Privacy
Effective: May 18, 2016
This privacy statement applies to Capital Blue Cross and Capital Blue Cross Connect websites owned and operated by Capital Blue Cross (“We”, “Us”, “Our”). Capital Blue Cross respects your right to privacy. When you visit this site, we may collect information on two different levels about your visit:
- Anonymous statistics collected as you browse the site
- Personally identifiable information you knowingly give us
We want you to be aware of how we collect and handle information on our website, as well as the choices available to you regarding our use of your personally identifiable information and how you can access and update this information. Click on the topics below for details on our Internet Privacy Policies:
What information does this website collect?
Capital Blue Cross collects personally identifiable information such as name, address, email address and ID number, when you knowingly provide it to us.
Specifically, during registration, members must include Name, Date Of Birth, email Address, Telephone Number, Mobile Number, Member ID, last four numbers of Social Security Number and Group ID. Name, Date of Birth, Member ID, last four numbers of Social Security Number and Group ID are used to verify member status. We also collect demographic information such as gender and zip code. We use gender information to help find health plans that best match your situation and health care needs. Gender does not impact health plan premium rates. Email address and Telephone Number are used to contact you regarding the registration process. Mobile number is used to send you text message alerts if you wish to sign up for them. You may opt-out from receiving them at any time by replying “STOP” to the text message or contacting us.
Our web servers automatically collect statistical information about your visit such as pages visited and which browsers are used to visit our site. None of this information is associated with you as an individual (see information about cookies below). We use these statistics to monitor our site's performance and to make it easier for you to use. Some of our pages use framing techniques to serve content to or from our partners while preserving the look and feel of our site. Please be aware that you are providing your personally identifiable information to these third parties and not to www.capbluecross.com.
What happens when I provide personally identifiable information on this website?
Any personally identifiable information you give us on this site will be used to provide the product, service or information you have requested or for which you registered.
Do you sell or give my information to non-Capital Blue Cross companies?
Your personally identifiable information, including your email address, gathered on this site will not be sold, rented, licensed or otherwise shared with third parties. The only exceptions are the following:
- Capital Blue Cross shares information with other member plans of the BCBSA to provide services to its members. Other Blue Plans are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services. This information includes Name, Date Of Birth, Member ID, Group Id. Email Address is NOT shared with other member plans of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
- You specifically authorize Capital Blue Cross to share your information with another company.
- We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our website.
- Disclosure is necessary to protect the safety of customers, employees, or property.
- Personally identifiable information may be exchanged with companies that directly assist or provide services for Capital Blue Cross that are related to user's health care program(s).
- If Capital Blue Cross is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website of any change in ownership or uses of your personally identifiable information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personally identifiable information.
- If you are a member of a group health plan, upon request from your group health plan, we may provide confirmation that you have registered for a member web account by providing your name and the date on which you registered.
Capital Blue Cross occasionally uses outside shipping companies to ship health kits or other promotional materials. These companies do not retain, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes. If you provide individually identifiable information at an event Capital Blue Cross sponsors with another company, or if you register on a co-sponsored website, you may be providing the individually identifiable information to the co-sponsor. Review the privacy statement at the event or on the co-sponsored site to learn how the partner uses this information. Be assured that Capital Blue Cross uses this information in accordance with this privacy statement.
Do you accommodate links to other sites?
Yes, our site contains links to other websites whose privacy practices may differ from those of Capital Blue Cross. If you submit personally identifiable information to any of those websites, your information is governed by their privacy statements. We are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy statement of any website you visit.
Social Media (Features) and Widgets
Our website includes Social Media Features, such as the Facebook Like button and Widgets, such as the Share this button or interactive mini-programs that run on our site. These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. Social Media Features and Widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy statement of the company providing it.
What does Capital Blue Cross do with non-personally identifiable information collected automatically?
Capital Blue Cross uses cookies, beacons, tags and scripts to collect this type of information in order to enhance your online experience. A cookie is a small data string our server writes to your hard drive that contains your unique user ID for our website. We use cookies to deliver Web content specific to your interests. We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. A session ID cookie expires when you close your browser. We use session cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our website. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. We set a persistent cookie to help improve our site by understanding the areas that are of interest to you via site usage analytics. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser’s “help” file. You may choose to change your browser settings to disable cookies. Please be aware that cookies may be required to complete certain functions on this website. No personally identifiable information is contained in cookies used by the website.
Web Beacons / Gifs
Our third party advertising partner employs a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs), that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We do not tie the information gathered by clear gifs to our customers’ personally identifiable information.
Analytics / Log Files
As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data. We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We do not link this automatically collected data to personally identifiable information.
3rd Party Tracking
The use of cookies by third parties is not covered by our privacy statement. We do not have access or control over these cookies. These third parties use session ID cookies and persistent cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our site.
Local Storage Objects (HTML5)
We use Local Storage Objects (LSOs) such as Flash cookies, to store content information and preferences. Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site or to display advertising based upon your Web browsing activity use LSOs such as HTML5 to collect and store information. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs. To manage Flash cookies, please access the Adobe Flash Player Website Storage Settings.
Behavioral Targeting / Re-Targeting
We partner with a third party ad network to either display advertising on our website or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our ad network partner uses cookies and Web beacons to collect non-personally identifiable information about your activities on this and other websites to provide you targeted advertising based upon your interests.
Does Capital Blue Cross use the information provided online to profile its customers?
No. Capital Blue Cross does not combine offline information about you with the online information that you provide on our website.
How you can update or correct your information.
If you would like to update, correct, and delete any information you have sent us via this website, please email us. Please indicate in the comments area of the form the changes you would like to make. Customer Service will contact you to confirm with you that the appropriate changes have been made within a reasonable timeframe.
At times, we may utilize email to:
- Respond to a site visitor's email.
- Respond to general inquiries, feedback or other inquiries.
- To send information that a visitor has requested.
- To send registered users information related to their health care program(s).
- Registered users may opt-in or opt-out of these emails. The opt-in and opt-out options that are applicable to your account can be accessed in My Email Settings
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
Information Security Practices
Capital Blue Cross takes precautions to protect its users' personal nonpublic information. When users submit sensitive information to us, the information is protected both online and offline.
Online connections to our website are encrypted. This is validated through the display of a lock icon on a web browser.
Capital Blue Cross has implemented a comprehensive information security program to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of personally identifiable information. This program consists of policies, processes, and technology. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job are granted access to personally identifiable information. Employees receive security training annually. The systems that store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.
The information security program is subject to monitoring and oversight annually. Updates are made as-needed so that the security program remains aligned with the mission of Capital Blue Cross.
No information security program is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our website, please email us.
Changes to this privacy statement
We may update this privacy statement to reflect changes to our information practices. If a material change is made to this privacy statement and/or the way we use our customers' personally identifiable information, we will post prominent notice of the nature of such change on our website prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.
Contact Us
If you have questions or concerns about this privacy statement, please contact us through the information below:
Our mailing address is:
Capital Blue Cross
2500 Elmerton Avenue
Harrisburg, PA 17177-9519
Our phone number is: 800.962.2242
Our fax number is: 717.541.6915
Contact us via email