Social Media & Your Personal Injury Case

If you end up getting injured in an accident, it is best to stay off of social media. A simple post about your personal injury or your current activities may seem harmless. However, that simple post may be giving away information about your case that could be used against you. Taking a break from social media for the duration of your personal injury case may be the best thing. This will help you in protecting your rights.

Insurance Companies: What will they look for?

Can social media affect your personal injury case? Your social media accounts, profiles, posts, and messages are readily available to an investigator or even the insurance company involved in with your claim. An investigator could use your social media as a way to find or use some evidence towards your claim. In addition, the insurance company could find ways to minimize your payout or deny your claim entirely. As part of their investigation, the insurer or investigator may use your social media accounts as a way to find out more information about your daily life. This insight may give them information even if the posts are from the past or present. To limit or mitigate your risk, it may be best to stay inactive for the duration of your case.

The investigator’s overall goal in searching your social media is to find evidence that could hurt your claim. This evidence may include signs that you made up your injuries or that you are not as badly injured as you had stated in your claim. They may look through your posts, pictures, videos, tagged locations, check-in locations, tagged photos, and other types of social media context for clues. The investigator will be looking for things such as you having a good time when you claimed that you lost quality of life as a damage. The investigator will try to use anything they can find against you during an injury claim.

Tips for Social Media During a Personal Injury Case

Do not post about the accident. Posting any information of your accident prior to any investigation could lead to you publishing misinformation or accidently incriminating yourself. This could have a negative impact on your case and also your personal reputation.
Do not post about any injuries. Any information that you post about injuries or medical care could give your insurance company too much information to use against you. This could also become an issue if you are not following doctor’s orders.
Refrain from posting any photos, videos, tags of any location or other people. Any indications of vacations, trips, fun nights out with friends or spending time with family could hurt your claim. This shows that you are able to enjoy life despite your injuries.
Tell any family or friends that they should not post anything about you or with you for the time being.

While social media is great for staying in contact with friends and family and giving life updates, it will not help you during the time of a personal injury claim. The things posted can only serve as a way of hurting you as you’re trying to recover fair compensation of your damages. The best way to protect your claim is to freeze or temporarily deactivate your accounts.

Your personal injury claim may take weeks or months to be resolved. Stay off of social media during the entire time to fully protect yourself.

If you need help in handling your personal injury case, contact an attorney at Ramos & Ramos or fill out our Free Case Evaluation.