Facebook is the Insurance Detective’s No.1 Investigative Tool?
It has been all over the news (not to mention Facebook), and is a good example of how mixups and nuisances are always ever ready wages for carelessness on Facebook. The story is of a Canadian woman, who we’ll just call Ms. X; Ms. X suffered from major depression, and has done so for more than an year. Ms. X needed to go on sick leave from her job at IBM, and her employer’s insurance company paid her disability benefits for the time she was unable to show up at work and earn a living. All of a sudden this week though, she found that the payments had stopped coming; when she made inquiries, she learned a lesson every social networking enthusiast would do well to look closely at.
Ms. X, on the advice of her doctor happened to take a vacation, and show up at her birthday party celebration. She then took pictures, and posted them on Facebook. Her insurance company admits to routinely using resources like a Facebook profile of anyone connected to a claim at their company, to investigate their lives. So when they found that they had been paying Ms. X for more than a year, and in their enthusiasm to find a way to wriggle out of their commitment, they happened to look up her social networking interests. And what did they find but a gift from heaven – pictures of Ms. X having a good time at her vacation, her birthday party, and in general looking quite normal and happy. This helped them somewhat prove that Ms. X was no longer depressed, and right away they were off the hook.
Of course, Ms. X isn’t letting this go easily – she is suing them. But it just goes to show how easy it is to invite a lapful of trouble with too much disclosure on Facebook. You just never know whom the details of your personal life can reach and come back to haunt you.
Tags: social network