Using Social Media=Higher Insurance Costs?

I just read an interesting article at confused.com on the impact of your home insurance prices if you use social media sites. Why you ask? Well….a lot of people like to Tweet or tell their friends on Facebook and MySpace that they are going on vacation….or heading over to a friend’s house for dinner. That’s great for their group of friends….but with the increased rate of search engines like Google crawling and indexing posts on social media sites….there are others who could use this information against you: thieves.

Just check out Twitter’s Search Engine, everything is indexed in real time.

They know when your house will be empty…..

I have friends in Mexico that were instructed to remove personal information from Facebook because kidnapping for ransom is a huge business down there. All of a sudden all this personal info just disappeared off their profile pages.

Will this lead to higher home insurance premiums, only time will tell. Our advice would be that you need to be careful how much you allow the world into your life….and especially certain details that could be used against you, such as robbing your house while you’re away on vacation.

Will this have an effect on a physicians’ medical malpractice insurance policy? Well, only time will tell with that as well. We already know that some hospitals and doctors are using Twitter to allow a family “into” the operating room so they can follow the progress of a family member’s surgical procedure. We hope that this can continue, b/c from my own experience, it’s horrible waiting those long hours without any type of update at all.