Will Facebook Damage Your Injury Accident Case? The Answer is..."Yes"! Here's How to Protect Yourself.
With thousands of people signing up every day, Facebook has become one of the fastest growing websites, let alone social media sites, for people of all ages. It has become a great tool to market your business and network with old friends and acquaintences. However, if you are in the middle of a personal injury case, having a Facebook page may not be the best in your interest. Personal information and photos posted for others to see, particularly the insurance adjustor and his private investigators, may actually ruin your case and deprive you of the compensation to which you are entitled.
Think about this:
- Despite privacy settings, photos posted by you are not limited to being viewed only by your friends and may still be viewed outside of your own network.
- In some cases, the court has actually demanded the injured plaintiff to turn over their Facebook log-in information and content to attorneys for the insurance company.
- Evidence can be found on your Facebook page and used by the police, media, lawyers, and other investigators.
- Insurance defense lawyers have clerks that check their adversary’s pages for information.
How can you protect yourself?
- Look through all the information and photos on your Facebook page with detail and remove anything that could remotely be used against you by an opposing party.
- Check privacy settings. Either put everything on private so only you and your friends can view photos or set a block on specific people such as the insurance lawyers.
- Search for your name in the search field of Facebook and see what pops up about yourself. Do the same on search engines like Google and Yahoo.
- Do not accept friend requests or respond to messages from people you do not know.
- If you do not necessarily need a Facebook page, consider deleting it.
This article may not guarantee to be bulletproof, but it will definitely help make sure that personal information about you does not fall into the wrong hands and damage your chances of winning your personal injury case.
The Jurewitz Law Group is a San Diego personal injury law firm representing people injured in car accidents, motorcycle crashes, slip and fall injuries, dog bite attacks, pedestrian accidents, and bicycle accidents. Their personal injury office is located in Downtown San Diego, has offices in Carlsbad, California, and serves all of San Diego County including the following cities and towns:
San Diego, Chula Vista, Escondido, Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos, El Cajon, Carlsbad, Poway, Encinitas, La Mesa, Santee, National City, Imperial Beach, Lemon Grove, Coronado.
