Facebook and Twitter Posts Can (And Will) Be Used Against You!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
You may not realize it, but an army of insurance claims adjusters and court staffers are silently perusing the social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and a host of others) for evidence that you are not disabled. They look for text and pictures that depict you as being healthy and active, at least more so than you claimed when you filed your case.
For example, a photograph depicting you on a jet ski will not bode well for your claim that your spinal injury keeps you from working. However, it might be a photo you added yesterday of a ski trip from 10 years ago. The person looking at your profile may not know that your skiing days are long gone, because the only date the viewer sees is yesterday’s date.
Some people are rather flippant about the seriousness of this issue. For example, one injured worker with a pending claim wrote the following and posted it to www.workerscompinsurance.com:
“Myself, I always just accepted that they would be veiwing my Facebook page, I would if I were them. But, I do see a couple holes in it; 1) There is no way they could justify obtaining your password for any reason. Just make the claim that you have had corespondance w/ your At or doctor via the private message function within your page. 2) I may post a picture today of me snowboarding that was taken 10 yrs. ago and if they wanna make something of it I invite. I will then embarras them. 3) These sites are predominately designed for entertainment w/ all the little fantasy games that are played on these sites etc… Anything I may post (comments, doctered pics etc…) lends itself to my personal entertainment and doesn’t have to true or “a matter of fact”. There are no legal or moral obligations that say I can’t skew facts for myself, as long as I don’t cause damage to anyone else etc… 4) Alot of people are relying entirely on sites like Facebook for their everyday e-mails and some other functions that a standard e-mail account would provide. It’s free and really not that much different from having a Yahoo account. You can share pics, blog, invite friends, all from a Yahoo account. So there is not reason why someone can’t justify using a Facebook page for their everyday corespondance to the rest of the world. I don’t doubt for a second that they will be allowed to view a lage part of these sites for their discovery, but I think at some point limitations will be imposed…”
http://www.workersco … r-Workers-Comp.-Case
This writer makes four flawed arguments.
1. Passwords are required to view your personal information on a social network.
Wrong! It is not entirely clear why a person would justify using Facebook to communicate with her doctor. It is true that social media allow the user to send and receive emails through their portals, but that system is quite similar to any other email provider, in that the inbox is password-protected, and no one but the sender and receiver are allowed to view the correspondence. Caution is advised when the posts are viewable by third parties. Anyone can post anything they like on their webpages, but that also means anyone can access what is in the public online view.
2. You can embarrass the insurance company or Social Security Administration
Wrong again! There is no way to embarrass a company or organization, because these entities have no feelings. You might attempt to embarrass a person, but that person alone is not the opposing party. Your online, public presence is documented, duplicable, and perfectly admissible against you. What your pictures from 10 years ago say is that you posted them yesterday. Unless you are wearing your aunt’s leg warmers from the 1980s, there will be no verifiable proof on the webpage of when the picture was taken.
3. Social networking sites are primarily used for entertainment.
Wrong a third time! In the first argument, the writer claims to be communicating with her doctor regarding important treatment issues through Facebook. Such an activity is not entertaining to the average person, unless that person is aspiring to a career in medicine and is not actually suffering from the effects of an illness or injury. Social media are what the user makes of them. Their flexibility and adaptability to the user are what makes them so pervasive in our “connected” society. Incidentally, it is possible to block your Facebook page from anyone not in your circle of friends by adjusting the privacy settings. But that is not a guarantee that your private content is safe.
4. Using Facebook for email is not different from using Yahoo or its equivalents.
Except it IS different! Facebook and other social media are designed to allow multiple channels of communication, email being only one such channel. For many people, the lines between the various methods of communicating become blurry, increasing the chance that you might inadvertently post your “private” email in a “public” place. The moral of the story is, use social media for being social, and use email to send and receive emails.
If you have a pending claim for benefits either on a workers’ compensation case or with the Social Security Administration, you should use common sense and plenty of caution when it comes to social media. Adjust your privacy settings. Be selective with the photos you choose to share. Tell the truth. Do what your mom taught you — “honesty is the best policy” — and you should be okay.
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