IN EARLY OCTOBER of this year, CareerBuilder.com published an article written by Editor Kate Lorenz entitled "Warning: Social Networking Can Be Harmful to Your Job Search". This article started out with the following anecdote and statistics pertaining to careless social networking posts:
That cute, affable guy who brags of his drunken exploits on FaceBook.com may be meeting a lot of other partiers online, but he's probably not getting added to the "friends" lists of many corporate recruiters. A recent study by the executive search firm ExecuNet found that 77 percent of recruiters run searches of candidates on the Web to screen applicants; 35 percent of these same recruiters say they've eliminated a candidate based on the information they uncovered.
This same warning applies as seriously and with as potentially dangerous consequences to personal injury claims. Over the course of the last few years, numerous insurance adjusters to whom I have spoken have come up with information on individuals involved in some capacity on injury claims (usually parties or witnesses) that I would have never expected them to know in the past and which has prompted me to ask "HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU KNOW THAT?". Increasingly I discover that they have found out information that discredits someone's story or potentially lessens their credibility from public posts that are found on social networks such as My Space, Facebook, Twitter and the numerous other sites where we can be lulled into a false sense of privacy or security. I am now CONVINCED that most if not all insurance companies are scanning social network posts in order to see whether there might be something available to use in discrediting (often times unfairly) someone who is asserting a personal injury claim. NOW is the recommended time to recognize that everything placed on these social networking sites is really PUBLIC.
EVEN IF you try to protect your sites from what my kids call "creepers" (those persons trying to look into your site content for the purpose of either being nosey or to possibly use the content against you) by setting the security on private so that only your "friends" can see everything, please remember that any so-called friend can use what you have made private to turn it into something public for the world to see. Therefore, for example, innocent comments made on a social network by someone who has been injured that pertain to involvement or participation in physical endeavors, even if you are innocently watching, can be taken out of context and used to give rise to questions about whether the speaker has in fact been injured to the extent claimed or whether their injuries really prevent them from doing what they are actually unable to do. I believe that most injured people would prefer to put a positive spin on things and let on to their acquaintances that they are doing better than how they are actually doing. It is human nature for most people to not want to be perceived as a whiner, so one with a "tough it out attitude" might instead err on overstating what they are able to do or not accurately detailing all of what they are not able to do. I am not being critical of a "tough it out attitude"; instead I am only waiving a big warning about how this attitude can get an injured victim in trouble if he publishes an overly favorable account of his condition on a social network post.
BEST PRACTICE: keep the facts of your claim and your medical condition off of the internet and out of social network posts. KEEP YOUR INJURY CLAIM PRIVATE AMONG ONLY YOU AND YOUR DOCTORS, ATTORNEY AND TRUSTED LOVED ONES....no one else. Too much can be twisted and distorted too easily when it comes to the use of social networking posts, thereby making social networking about your personal injury claim or about your endeavors during the pendency of your personal injury claim as dangerous as the indiscriminate job searcher who posts things that are most distasteful to future employers.
At Stoehr & Smith, LLC, it is our pledge to protect your privacy WHILE PROTECTING YOUR RIGHTS WHEN REPRESENTING YOU IN A PERSONAL INJURY CLAIM, so as to work toward concluding your claim in A MOST FAVORABLE MANNER that gives credit to the truth and accuracy of the consequences of your injuries and damages!
Attorney Nat Smith natsmith@stoehrsmithlaw.com
