The Dangers of using Social Media after a Car Accident Injury Claim
It is unfortunate, but car accidents do occur on our roads. And it is only right that if the accident wasn’t your fault, you wouldn’t have to incur any financial costs in medical bills, time lost from work, future problems, psychological issues, and other expenses. For this reason, we give people the option of making claims against the responsible party if the accident wasn’t their fault.
To be able to get an accurate result from the court decision about how much compensation you will be entitled to, it is important that you don’t compromise your chances. It is important therefore that you get professional advice about what you should be providing, expecting and how you should be behaving before and during the time that the court is deciding.
Social Media
Like it or not, social media is central to the way that many people conduct themselves in today’s society. While this can often bring good things into your life, adding to and not taking away, social media can be extremely damaging to a personal injury or accident claim case.
It is more than likely that any defending parties will be doing their research on you, and that will probably include searching online for any information that might help their case. So you should be extremely careful about what information you are putting on your social media.
- If possible, keep your social media pages closed until the case is over, or if this isn’t possible, make sure that your social media pages are open only to people that you know.
- Don’t accept friend requests from people who you don’t know personally
- Try not to write anything about the accident, what happened, the people involved, photos or how you are both physically and mentally
- Don’t answer questions that people ask about what happened, or how you are now
- Avoid writing status’s about ‘how you are feeling’ – even by talking about how you are happy today could affect your claim
- If you have to upload photos, think about whether it will harm or help your case. You can’t go claiming a back injury when you are posting pictures of you having spent the day ice skating
- If people have tagged you in photos on Facebook, select ‘only me’ in the options of who can see your tagged photos
- Don’t join any discussions or groups with people that you don’t know, or about subjects which could affect your claim
- You can remove yourself from search results on Facebook by selecting ‘only friends’ under ‘search visibility.’
- Remove your Facebook page from Google searches too, by going to ‘Privacy Settings’ and un-checking the ‘Public Search Listing’ box
We are always hearing about how people are becoming legally found out due to their social media activity, but unfortunately, this is not just isolated to people who are trying to cheat the system. People with legitimate claims are also finding themselves suffering from either their actions or those of their ‘friends’ on social media, and this is why you need to be extremely careful about what information is being put into the public domain.
If you have suffered an accident and are looking for compensation, it is worth also discussing your social media activity with your auto accident lawyer to ensure the best results possible.