Social Media: A Powerful Tool in Your Investigational Arsenal

With almost 50% of the adult population of North America on Facebook, your Claimant more likely than not has a substantial Facebook trail. Not lagging far behind on the social media bandwagon are, to name a few: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest. And, with the penchant for these websites to revamp their privacy settings with every passing day, more than a few Claimants’ posts may be a little more “public” than the Claimant comprehends. This, of course, provides a fertile landscape for uncovering information that could help minimize, if not nullify, a claim. Accordingly, a few minutes surfing the social media environments can yield valuable returns.

Some claimants, unfortunately, fancy themselves as crafty and perchance might sift through their social history and delete “less than favorable” posts. All may not be lost, however, thanks to some powerful web archiving tools, including, The Wayback Machine (http://archive.org/index.php). Simply paste the URL link of the Claimant’s social media page into the Wayback Machine box and click “Take Me Back.” It’s not a guaranty, but the archiving feature of the Wayback Machine might have captured the Claimant’s posts before they were erased. Also, Google, Bing and Yahoo allow searches of “cached” web pages.

You never know when a Claimant’s pictures or status updates of his zip-lining and whitewater adventure might come in handy.