It’s a strange phenomenon that something as intangible as social media can be responsible for extra costs in your home, but it’s a very real one. These days, almost everyone is connected to at least one social networking account, and once you have a presence online it can be nearly impossible to remove it permanently. Amidst the pictures of kittens, parodies of Gangnam Style and hashtags, social media has the potential to impact your home insurance policy.
Voided claims – don’t be a fool
A burglar breaking in to steal a laptop
If your house was burgled while you were out, and you didn’t lock your front door, your home insurance company could well refuse your claim on the grounds that you didn’t take adequate precautions with your home security. This would have unnecessarily increased the risk of burglary, and the blame for the lapse in security would fall on you.
Likewise, what if you post on Facebook that you got a brand new Smart TV for Christmas (complete with photo of it nestled in front of the living room window) followed by a post to say that you’re going away for a weekend? All any potential thief would need is your home address and they’ve got themselves a free TV. Oh, wait, your home address is on your Facebook profile, bold as brass.
If you come home and are missing a TV, your home insurance provider might have limited sympathy with you since you’ve provided your thief with the necessary information to target your house. When fifty convicted burglars were asked if social media makes burglary easier, 78% of them said that social networks are actively used by thieves to target houses (source: http://www.confused.com/news-views/infographics/social-media-crime).
“Surely, no one would be as silly as to post their whereabouts online?” you cry. Actually, people do. A survey carried out by Santander at the end of 2012 showed that nearly half (43%) of people surveyed said they’d post online that they’d be going away for the holidays, meaning that one in three houses could easily be targeted for burglary.
Fraudulent claims – that’s what friends are for
Another way that your online presence can affect your home insurance is if you try to pull a fast one when you make a claim. Let’s say that you put in a home insurance claim for water damage to the carpet, and you say that it’s from a burst pipe. You’re a smart one so you make sure that your privacy settings are tighter than Fort Knox, and the claim starts to move as planned. What you didn’t bank on was a friend of yours who posts a photo (and tags you in it) of you in your living room with a hosepipe and the caption “The party got a little out of hand when we decided to water the carpet. LOL!”.
What makes matters worse is that your friend is pretty blasé when it comes to privacy settings, meaning that everyone and their grandma can see the photo, including the company who are processing your claim. At the very least, the claim could be voided because you’ve not disclosed all the relevant information to the company. If you’re unlucky, it could be marked as a fraudulent claim, meaning a soggy carpet is the least of your worries.
This method has been used to prove fraud in car insurance claims in the past and also to prove health insurance fraud in the US. In the case of Locke v Stuart 2011, it was found that a fraudulent claim for injury and damages was being made as part of a wider fraud network. Part of the evidence that proved this were printouts of Facebook profiles that linked the accused to a number of known fraudsters. A precedent has now been set – if there’s evidence of fraud on your social networking profile (or those of your friends), you can bet that it will be used against you if you try anything funny.
What can I do?
Gareth Kloet, head of home insurance for Confused.com, says, “something like Foursquare or the check-ins on Facebook broadcasts people’s locations on a platform which has 1 billion users – you don’t need to be an insurance provider to see the risk that poses. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see rises of up to 10% for social media users in the future.”
Your online presence is the version of you that’s perceived as being closest to ‘the real you’. Therefore, the best thing to do is to make sure that only the right people have access to your information. Check and check again your privacy settings to make sure that your posts, photos and information aren’t being made public accidentally. It would also be wise to check that the people on your friends list can’t tag you in their posts and photos without your approval. This gives you an extra level of control over your online image so that you’re not giving any information away. Make sure that your personal information stays personal, and don’t give your home insurance provider an excuse to bump up your premium or refuse your claim.
Jamie Gibbs is the resident blogger, gadget nut and social media zombie for home insurance comparison site Confused.com. He has sworn off both Instagram and Facebook, but now instead he refreshes his Twitter feed every 30 seconds in case he misses something.
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