Facebook Photos Invalidate Insurance

[rvalkass 5]

Spotted this story earlier today:

A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer's insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook.
Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Que., for the last year and a half after she was diagnosed with major depression.

The Eastern Townships woman was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from Manulife, her insurance company, but the payments dried up this fall.

When Blanchard called Manulife, the company said that "I'm available to work, because of Facebook," she told CBC News this week.

She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on the popular social networking site, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday evidence that she is no longer depressed, Manulife said.

More information: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

I don't use Facebook, or any personal networking sites. I know there are plenty of people like me who also don't use them, and I reckon quite a few people are worried about things like this happening to them. We've all heard stories of people losing their jobs due to Facebook. Some of my friends even have classes at University that teach them what they should and shouldn't be posting online so that they remain employable.

So, should we all be more careful about what we post online? And should these companies be looking at social networking sites like this?

[kagerioshu 0]

I don't necessarily agree with companies prying into people's personal information to make cases such as these against their employees. They can and should have the right to protect their interests, but they need more substantial proof than uninformed observations of website content to deny people their benefits. At the very least, these sort of decisions should have an objective evaluation given by a neutral third party.However! In this particular case, something such as "major depression" is a very fuzzy concept without the clear boundaries you'd find with something such as say, a disabling injury or physical disease. If she's taking pictures on facebook and having a good time, then she certainly isn't as severely depressed as she should be in order to get leave benefits. It's the equivalent of being caught dancing when you got time off by showing up to your boss with a leg cast. Basically, she was just milking the system and now she got caught. And that's her OWN fault.

[The Simpleton 2]

Wow yet another one! I agree with rvalkass that we shouldn't get too involved with social networking sites. But then some of our friends may get disappointed if we don't accept their requests. So what I did is i joined Facebook and Orkut, on which most of my friends are, but I never put anything on my profile - no photos, no videos, no status updates, nothing! I only communicate with my friends when required and just leave it at that. This way no outsider can find out about me and the same time my friends also will have my company. I think this is the ideal solution and is safe networking

[H.O.D 0]

This is not the first time people have lost something important due to the effect of Facebook and this is not a pleasing matter at all. My close friend also had a bad experience out of Facebook when her photos were used for bad purposes. She was very shocked and after that she deleted her facebook account. What was depressing was the fact that one of her friends might have done it, because a stranger couldn't gain access to her facebook profile, isn't it? If we can't trust our own friends online then that is a very sad situation for us and the whole point of using social networking sites becomes questionable. Orkut is even worse than Facebook because it's more open and the danger is even greater. After what happened to my friend I decided to stay away from these websites altogether. It's good to meet your friends online but safer if you meet them in real life!

[The Simpleton 2]

Orkut is even worse than Facebook because it's more open and the danger is even greater. After what happened to my friend I decided to stay away from these websites altogether. It's good to meet your friends online but safer if you meet them in real life!

Well that's not entirely true - Google decided to shape up Orkut a bit and it's much safer now - strangers don't get to see your scraps/photos/videos and there are some privacy settings for friends as well. Anyway both of these networks are not 100% safe and I wouldn't certainly want to be punished like that woman in the article, just for "having fun"!

[room2593 0]

It's hard to know for sure if that was the only evidence that they had - perhaps she assumed that the facebook photos were the clinching evidence. Maybe the company had other causes, I don't know.It comes down to this, for me: decide if you want the internet to see what you post. If you're ashamed of it or scared of it getting out, don't put it online.BUT in this case, the stuff she put online was utterly harmless. Whether you use Orkut or Myspace or Facebook, pictures of your personal life should not bone you at work. They should be separate, different, utterly apart. I don't like it when bosses force their employees to friend them so that they can ensure that the employee is acting correctly and "upholding company values."Oh, joy.

[sheepdog 10]

Ok, I'm going to be a hard nosed jerk over this one. This BS about not working and getting paid not to work because you are "depressed" is a crock of horse hockey. If you are depressed the best thing you can do for yourself is to get up off your dead lazy *bottom* and go to work and do something constructive to take your mind of your supposed problems. Getting paid for screwing off is not a way to fight depression. Now don't get me wrong, I don't believe that a company has any rights to interfear with their employee's private life. There seem to be a ot of companies that think they own the bodies and souls of their employees, which is absolutly NOT right. You should have the right to do whatever you chose to do on your own free time. But if this dumb broad was taking pictures of herself partying and having a good time, she deserved what she got. After all, Facebook is a public venue. Like somebody else said, if you are on sick leave with a broken leg, you would not take the cast off to go dancing in public, and if you were stupid enough to do that, you deserve to get caught and punished

[Parubilla 0]

It was a really funny story for me, because that?s something that has been running around the internet since the boom of the social networking sites, about how you handle your things online, like if she?s really not depressed or she can control it using medication and finally got the insurance to pay her, then she shouldn?t be posting this happy pictures online, keep them for yourself!!!. And I do agree you have to be careful on the things you publish online it can definitely affect your life, whether is work or personal or not even that, like if someone post a picture with you in the back doing something you shouldn?t then that?s a problem too. I can?t imagine how many people have been caught cheating or something for one of this pictures. I totally agree that?s your private life and that companies should not be looking a it, but at the same time is the person they are going to hire, so if they have the opportunity to look what is that person like outside the office they?re going to look. Companies always have social meetings where you have time to share with your workmates outside the office, they want to know who?s the drunk one, who?s the one that after one drink start attacking the women to see who?s going to hook up with him, anyway if those kind of things are accessible to companies by just looking at a profile they are going to do it. And there?s something else and that?s just my opinion, if you want your private life to be that, private, then why the hell you have your pictures and stuff online? keep them yourself at your house and show them to the people you want to show them, send them by email to your friends, there are tons of solutions you can have without exposing your life like that. So if you like to be part of this networks then don?t complaint when you get in trouble because of them. I personally don?t use it but that?s up to every person.

[thejode 0]

Yeah, these days you hear all the time now that facebook is totally ruining peoples lives. It's also pretty unsettling how they updated their TOS so that they can do whatever they want with your pesonal info... FOREVER. I generally tend to avoid social networking. You also hear on the news that too many kids are signing up for facebook when they're young, and entering their first and last name. Their parents never seem to know, either because they're too busy, or they simply don't care. Once you post something online, it's impossible for it to be permanetly erased. These guys back up their systems ALL the time. So if one of their databanks burned down, they'd have extra copies of this stuff. If you say something stupid while your young(15, 16), like kids who create a site devoted to hating their teacher, it can really catch up to them in the long run. I say, if you're going to sign up for facebook, sign up with a fake name, so that your employer can never trace your name back to you. How does your employeer even manage to get acess to go into these places?

[webishqiptar 0]

So she was trying to cheat the insurance company or what? I think you must put online everything you want. I have a question, how the hell did they discover her pics, as you can hide your private information from others users than friends.