After a Texas Car Wreck, Your Digital Footprint is Huge
Here’s the situation. You’ve been in a car wreck where you’re the victim, the other driver was clearly at fault. You know that you shouldn’t be posting on social media, so you log out of those accounts thinking you’re safe. Nothing posted means no digital evidence, right?
In this post the Car Crash Captain takes a look at what actually gets recorded digitally, and how all of this can be used against you. You leave digital traces even without your knowledge, and often without your consent. Learn more about how we serve Northwest Texas, including Richardson, Dallas, Plano, or more.
Hidden Metadata Recorded on Your Phone
Everything you do on your phone is tagged and recorded. Every picture you take has the geolocation recorded behind the scenes; even if you never posted those pictures to an online profile.
Your movement is tracked by a number of different apps – maps, fitness apps, weather apps, and more. Even when you ask the app not to track, they’re still monitoring your location and patterns.
Bluetooth logs and Wi-Fi connections show when and where you tapped into a network.
All of this happens with your phone whether you want it to or not. There are numerous cases that have popped up around the country where insurance companies were able to subpoena phone records and found data including:
- Google timeline data
- Fitbit and Apple Health logs
- Instagram EXIF Data
- Uber/Lyft Ride Logs
All of these can be used to counter your claims of limited mobility, insomnia, whether you were home or not, or your ability to drive or work. As more and more apps continue to harvest more and more of our data, these logs will become more heavily used by insurance companies to lower their payouts.
Silent Tagging on Other People’s Social Accounts
You’ve likely been tagged in a photo or video in the past. Sometimes you’re not even there, but you’ve been tagged because friends and family are missing your presence. Maybe it’s at a restaurant, a birthday party for a family member, or a coworker tagging you so you get a notification of the shenanigans they’re getting up to without your presence.
If you’re staying off social media, you won’t even see these. If you contact that friend or family member to remove the tag, it’s still embedded into the metadata, and anyone with access to that page could have taken a screenshot.
When you’re in court, arguing that you were indeed injured, the opposing counsel could argue that if you’re well enough to attend a birthday party, you’re well enough to work. Even if all you did was sit in the corner and smile as the kids opened presents.
To protect yourself, encourage friends not to tag you in posts, adjust your privacy settings as soon as you can after the wreck, or even temporarily disable your accounts.
AI Recognition is Really Good
As AI gets better and better at simulating humans, it is also getting better and better at recognizing images.
Facebook has had facial recognition for quite some time, prompting a tag if you post a picture that includes someone it recognizes. But now similar software is getting better at recognizing things like:
- Body movements
- Facial expressions
- Exercise activities
- Sporting events
The images, no matter where they are posted, can recognize you, show that you’re doing an activity that could be difficult given your stated pain levels, and then argue that these images show you aren’t actually in the pain you claim you are.
Every App is Watching What You Do Creating Digital Evidence
Whenever you install a new app, you usually get a notice that allows you to “ask the app not to track.” For the most part, selecting that option does very little.
Most apps are still recording things like:
- Location history
- Movement data
- Activity level
- Device or App usage
- Metadata
- Timestamps
Even if your account is entirely private, everything is being recorded. Even if the app isn’t sharing the data, it’s still storing the data. Given the right avenues, the insurance companies could gain access to that information to show that you’re not being honest.
Deleted Posts Are Archived; Not Deleted
Suppose you forget and you start posting on social media. Something innocent, perhaps, like sitting on a lawn chair in the back yard sipping on some lemonade. Sounds innocent, but then you think, “oopsy, I should delete that!” and you do. No harm, right? Post is gone, evidence is gone, and it wasn’t even showing anything that could be used against you, right?
It’s not quite that straightforward. Deleting posts can be seen as what is called “spoliation” or the act of intentionally destroying evidence. Even though the digital evidence wasn’t useful for anything, it was deleted intentionally and now there’s suspicion of what else have you been intentionally hiding?
Even if you delete it and it’s no longer accessible from the end-user standpoint, it is still stored on the servers, and it can be recalled if subpoenaed.
Herbert Law Group Helps Texas Car Wreck Victims
That’s pretty heavy hitting, and quite frightening to know just what can be pulled and used against you. However, it’s not all bad. First, this helps track down the people that truly are trying to game the system. There are some people that see these claims as payouts so they never have to work again, and they fudge the truth so they can get more. These cheaters are being called out.
Unfortunately, it also means innocent victims, like yourself, are caught in the crossfire.
And it means you’ll need to be vigilant to take care not to “mess up” while your case is still going through the system. It also means you need a professional Texas car wreck lawyer more than ever.
Herbert Law Group knows how to push back against these insurance companies. When they’re using digital evidence against you, they can twist the truth. A great car wreck lawyer can push back. And we’re not afraid to push back.
Call our offices at 214-414-3808, or fill out the contact form on our site, and we’ll have a short conversation with you to learn what happened, and determine how we can help.