What You Post Online Could Be Directly Impacting Your Insurance Coverage
Tech Experts: What You Post Online Could Be Directly
Impacting Your Insurance Coverage
March 21, 2019 at 6:32 pm
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — What insurance policy holders do
in their daily lives may not be so private.
If you’re posting any information publicly online, your
insurance company could be using it to determine your coverage, CBS2’s Natalie
Duddridge reported Thursday.
Posing in front of a great white shark and dangling your
feet out the side of a helicopter — those types of pictures may get you likes
on Instagram, but only dislikes from your insurance company, which could
consider it dangerous, tech experts say.
“Especially for claims, they look into social media,
looking to see if someone’s driving a motorcycle without a helmet or posting
pictures drinking and smoking,” said Duarte Pereira, senior VP of FitechGelb.
Experts say searching your online presence could become a
standard practice of the insurance underwriting process that could affect life
insurance, car insurance, home insurance, and even pet insurance.
For example, posting while driving could label you as a
distracted driver and impact your policy renewal. By sharing your family’s
vacation online, insurers could claim you put your home at risk to burglars.
Even snapping a selfie with your new dog without disclosing the pet could
affect your home insurance, CBS2’s Duddridge reported.
“Variables like pets can impact your underwriting,
especially certain breeds of pets,” said Sean Kevelighan, CEO of the Insurance
Information Institute. “The one thing we encourage the customer to know and to
do is to ask questions of their insurer.”
In January, New York state issued new guidelines to
protect consumers and requires insurers to prove when social media data use is
justified.
“Nowadays, everybody just post a selfie without knowing
what could happen,” resident Alfredo Rodriguez said.
“We need to be careful about what we post to social
media, anyway. That’s the reason I don’t use Facebook at all,” Ananya Restogi
said.
But tech experts say there may actually be a few things
you can do to clean up or reverse your profile.
“Posting things like running a marathon or doing
exercise,” Pereira said.
That is, if you’re looking to improve your life insurance
coverage, not if you claimed an injury. But most importantly, insurers say
always be honest with your providers.
Insurers say, especially if you filed an injury claim, no
pictures should be popping up of you parasailing or skydiving.
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