Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Social Networking Sites and Claims Investigations

Some of this is in my frequently asked questions but I thought that I should put something here as well  as I feel this is a very important issue for injured workers to know about.  Our society has become a lot more open to free expression as a result of the internet.  We can publish diaries to the world in Blogs, have our own websites, upload photos, share music, and make contacts with people from different countries, and cultures.  I think that for the most part, this is a great concept.  However, if you've been hurt on the job and your claim is being investigated, you MUST take into consideration anything that you have out there on the internet...I have run into cases where private investigators are now searching for blogs and looking on Social Networking Sites like MySpace to see if there is any information that could be used to attack someone's credibility or be used to establish that they were not injured or are no longer disabled.  An injured worker must be very careful about what pictures/content he or she has on a website.  The safest way to make sure that this information stays out of an investigators hands is to shut the site down; however, if you want to keep your web page, blog, etc. running, you should think very carefully about what you say and put on that site.