Social media has made a big impact in our society. Statistics show that 79% of Americans use social media on a daily basis. The high number is because many people use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Most of the social media users use these platforms to get daily news, communicate with others, or use them for entertainment. However, when it comes to filing a car accident claim, social media is the one thing you want to avoid.

How can social media hurt my car accident claim?

The process of completing a car accident claim can take a while to complete. During that time, it is important to make sure that claimants do not unintentionally hurt their case.

To process a claim, insurance companies are tasked to make sure that they can find anything to discredit your case and avoid paying your claim. They do this in the following ways:

• Using your day to day activities against you. The insurance companies does extensive research on someone if they are filing for a claim. This means searching through media posts to see if you are really hurt as you claim. Day-to-day activities such as going to the gym, going to yoga classes, going to the mall to buy shoes, hiking, going for a run, or attending a birthday party can raise red flags to the insurance companies.

• Looking at your friends’ profiles. Even if you set your profile to private, your friends on social media may be public. If your friends post pictures of you and tag you, the insurance company can see this as well and can use it to their advantage.

• Getting you to add them as a friend. Insurance companies can try to get you to add them as a friend on social media by making fake profiles. Once you add them, they can see everything you have made public to your followers.

• Using your posts against you. We post sometimes in the heat of the moment, and most people do when they’ve been in an accident. “I was just in an accident.” “Can you believe this?” are just examples. Also people post about their health. In regular circumstances, these posts would be okay. When dealing with the insurance companies however, these innocent posts can be twisted.

What can you do to avoid accidentally hurting your car accident claim?

Your claim against the insurance company is very important. As such, we want to make sure the insurance company does not have a reason to deny your claim. Below are some of the ways you can protect your claim.

• Set your profile to private. Most profiles on social media are set to public. You can help your case by setting the profile to private. In this way, you can control who sends you a friend request and who can see your information. But that is not enough. In order to make sure that your information cannot be seen, we suggest that you change your entire permissions. This way, your friends will need to ask your permission to tag you in pictures. This recommendation should extend to family and friends who have you as a friend on social media. If you have trouble with this, you can click here to make your profile completely private.

• Don’t post anything. The less, the better. Many people feel this is a little extreme but it can come in handy. In some claims, the attorneys of the insurance companies can accesses each and every post, whether it be private or public. This is done by a subpoena. In order to avoid it, we suggest not posting anything for the remainder of your case.

At Tran Law Group, we work hard for you because we are YOUR legal team! We make sure our clients’ cases against the insurance companies are strong. Contact us now for a free consultation at 713-789-5200.