

Insurance coverage denied because of Facebook photos - boredguy8
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/11/creepy-insurance-company-pulls-coverage-due-to-facebook-pics.ars

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rit
Insurance companies regularly engage private investigators to spy upon and
photograph people they suspect of fraud, or whom they just want to find an
excuse to stop providing benefits to. Sadly, I don't know how controversial or
different this is (putting aside my personal feelings about it). The only real
difference here is that an insurance investigator found photos instead of
taking them. Either way, the same photos taken by an investigator would have
been used the same way.

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tlb
Sick benefits mean: if you convince a doctor you are too sick to work, you can
stop working and the insurance company pays your salary indefinitely instead.
As you might imagine, some people try to take a long paid vacation this way
using vague subjective illnesses like depression. So insurance companies
really do have to defend themselves from fake claims and malingering. I dunno
about this case, but in general you can appreciate why they have to try to
catch fakers.

~~~
abalashov
The question is about whether a photo depicting someone looking happy or
having fun precludes the condition of depression, and is in itself a
sufficient basis for terminating benefits.

It is no a part of the known clinical attributes of depression that a person
must appear unhappy and detached 100% of the time. In fact, I have not known a
single depressed person - including those with severe clinical depression -
who exhibit such consistency.

In fact, volatility of mood, including extreme variations, is often a key
characteristic of whatever it is that depression is. People who suffer from
depression often have no problem participating or "blending in" various social
gatherings, events, etc. - it's more that in their private world, they are
unable to maintain stable emotional equilibrium.

In any case, this is irrelevant. The point is that a photo of someone with a
smile on their face on a social networking site does not meet the evidentiary
burden required to make decisions with nontrivial political and legal weight
such as denying someone insurance coverage.

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netcan
Douglas Adams on the "Internet":

 _I don’t think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn’t becoming a
major factor in our lives. However, it’s very new to us. Newsreaders still
feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a
crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ They don’t bother to mention
when criminals use the telephone or the M4, or discuss their dastardly plans
‘over a cup of tea,’ though each of these was new and controversial in their
day._

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dustingetz
"Facebook doesn't allow any accounts created on their servers to be used for
commercial purposes (So the existence of all-access corporate accounts would
violate their own terms of use). What they do, however, is handle requests for
private data individually, and their standard for decision isn't very well
defined in the terms of service or privacy policy."

<http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=21092>

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jrockway
Now I know how to monetize social sites. Just sell the information to
insurance companies! (What's next, deranged exes who were just released from
prison?)

~~~
ericamzalag
Isn't the solution to simply be more conservative with what you post on
facebook? we all know that nothing on it is private... If you are looking for
a private more secure social networking site, use intronetworks, not
facebook... Posting pictures of yourself is a cry for attention...

