Is Your Employer’s Insurance Company Spying On You? Advice From A Denver Workers’ Compensation Attorney
Have you recently been injured at work? If so, you have probably reported your injury to your employer and started the process of applying for workers’ compensation. What should you do while you wait to hear whether your application has been denied or approved? Be careful, according to Denver workers’ compensation attorney Mark A. Simon, who warns that your employer’s insurance company is probably watching your every movement.
Why Do Insurance Companies Spy on Victims?
After you file your workers’ compensation claim, your employer’s insurance company may immediately hire a private investigator and assign him to your case. Why? The insurance company wants to ensure they do not pay you any money you are not entitled to, so if you are faking or exaggerating an injury, they want to know about it.
How Do They Monitor Your Behavior?
Private investigators will go to great lengths to determine whether you are being dishonest about your injury. They may visit your neighbors and ask about your behavior to see if anything suspicious turns up. Or, they may stick around your neighborhood to try to catch you running outside or doing intense yard work you couldn’t possibly do if you were injured.
Believe it or not, private investigators will even dig for information about you online. It’s very common for these investigators to find you on social media and dig through your personal information if you do not have strict privacy settings on your personal page. What exactly are they looking for? Let’s say you have filed a claim regarding a back injury you suffered on the job that has left you unable to work. But, you recently posted pictures on Facebook of you and your best friend rock climbing at a local gym. These pictures will be used against you in court to prove you are not as injured as you claim to be.
How Should You Protect Yourself?
Throughout the workers’ compensation application process, you have to be honest. You should never fabricate or exaggerate the extent of your injuries in an attempt to get more money from your employer’s insurance. But besides being honest, you should also be very careful about what you post online. Investigators can easily take a picture or status update out of context to make it seem incriminating, so it’s best to post nothing at all until your case has been resolved.
You should never talk about the status of your case on social media. Even if what you say is appropriate, you can’t control what your friends or family members will say in the comments, and if they say something out of line, this can reflect badly on you.
Or, keep your social media profiles on the most restrictive privacy settings possible. During the time your claim is being processed, do not accept friend requests from anyone you don’t know in case it is an investigator attempting to look at your activity. Learn more about keeping your social media profiles private.
If you have any questions about your workers’ compensation case, attorney Mark A. Simon can help. If you have been injured because of someone else’s negligence, call us or contact Mark A. Simon to discuss your rights during a free consultation.