Insurance companies are beginning to use social media accounts to confirm their claims. So what does this mean as a social media user and an insurance customer? Your insurance company most likely isn’t using social media for anything other than confirming fraud at the moment. However, it seems that some companies are beginning to use social media to create more targeted prices for premiums.

The short story is that companies could use your social media to affect what you pay. While this is yet to become standard practice, the time to start cleansing your social profile is now.

How to Keep your Private Information  from Insurance Companies

Disable Geolocation

Geolocation is a popular feature that ranges throughout most if not all social media sites. Know that when you provide this service to your friends, you are also providing it to others who could attempt to use it against you.    Insurance companies could use this feature to determine the time and location of an incident. Fortunately, you can disable geolocations on all popular social media sites.

Watch what you share

This is something you should consider regardless of Insurance companies. Refrain from posting any personal information that you wouldn’t want people you don’t know to see. Always assume that there is a way your posts, pictures, and comments will be made public.

With that said, there are certain steps you should take to avoid any potential discrepancies with insurance companies. For example, if you are in an accident, try a keep from posting pictures of the accident or details regarding it. While it may feel unfair to withhold yourself from receiving support from friends and family over social media, remember that there is no way of knowing how your insurance company could use the information you place online.

Manage Your privacy settings

Make sure you are keeping up with your privacy settings. Privacy policies and regulation are constantly changing. Even with the highest of privacy settings  there can still be ways for your information to be viewed. Make sure you are doing everything necessary to protect your data and the way it is used by social media platforms or even insurance companies looking to learn from it.

Keep tabs on your connections

It is hard to keep track of how many connections you make on your social media page. Sure you can see your number of friends or followers but how many of them do you associate with personally? Sometimes these connections can provide misinformation to Insurance Companies looking to learn more about you.

This also goes for photos you are tagged in. Unfortunately, in this instance, you don’t have the power to remove a photo that may reflect poorly on you to companies. You can, however, untag yourself from any photos and ask whoever posted the photo to remove it.

Be transparent with your Insurance company

There is only so much you can hide (and really only so much you should). In the event that you have reported an incident to your insurance company, make sure you are giving them all the details needed for them to assess the situation fairly. While your privacy should be one of your main concerns, undisclosed information can be seen as deliberate and marked as fraud.

Conclusion

As the reach of social media continues to grow, so will the applications that companies are able to create from it. Insurance companies are just one of many reasons you should keep track of how your social media is perceived.

Tap Into The Digital You at ScoresMatter.