Consider this post to be your daily reminder to check your social network privacy settings–too much transparency could cost you your insurance benefits, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:
Nathalie Blanchard, a Granby resident, says she’s suffering from severe depression that has made it impossible for her to work full-time for the past 18-months.
She says her sick leave payments were cut after insurance giant Manulife obtained profile pictures on Facebook showing her at bars, whooping it up during her birthday and on a beach holiday.
Blanchard, who lives in Quebec province, said her doctor told her to go have some fun, but apparently her insurer thought she was having too much to be depressed. According to another CBC article, the moments of revelry didn’t cure her condition:
“In the moment I’m happy, but before and after I have the same problems” as before, she said.
She’s taking them to court, in what should be an interesting case to test social media’s reach into the real world. The case suggests a host of other difficult questions: Can insurance companies raise your premiums if they see a picture of you smoking a cigarette on the internet? Will the court decide you can make a medical diagnosis from a Facebook picture? What about a weekend’s worth of happy tweets?
Another take home lesson, kids, is that should you make headlines, for whatever dubious reason, your Facebook pics will also be on the news. However in this case, Blanchard offered up her photos to get her story to the media. ABC News has a short video interview with Blanchard on their site.
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Image: Facebook
November 24th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Denying her coverage for severe depression because she is happy in photographs on her facebook page shows a complete ignorance of how depression, photography and social networking work. Those who are depressed can still have happy moments, or they can at very least fake a smile for a camera. It also seems obvious that most people think they are more attractive when they look happy, so only photos where you look happy will generally make it on to facebook. Did they expect to see a bunch of pictures of her sulking in a bathrobe on her facebook page?
November 26th, 2009 at 4:25 am
so i don’t think so but the thing ids that we all may only depressed about our job and in general life can be sweet ,
November 26th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
You know, normally I’m all with the mentally ill and against the insurance companies. But I have a bit of a problem with this one.
Posit a normal human being who, for the sake of argument, doesn’t like their job. Maybe they don’t much like working at all. It pays the bills but then one day they discover that the corporate insurance policy will pay for unhappiness. Shazam!
Suddenly they don’t have to show up for work and yet the paycheck is still rolling in. Now you have time to go on those beach holidays, spend time in the bars and update that Facebook page. And you have the money to do it in style.
Maybe you say the difference is the doctor and the diagnosis. Well that’s true enough. However there’s never been an objective, scientific, irrefutable way to measure depression has there? I mean if I wanted to I could go to the Doctor and come up with a pretty good story that would get me off work. It’s like that non-specific back pain excuse.
What’s that got to do with the above case? Well, seems to me kinda like Ms. Blanchard is depressed when she’s working and happy when she’s not working. Like the fun activities are, you know, fun, and work is not so much fun.
My story isn’t proof. But then, Ms. Blanchard’s story isn’t proof either. And posting her exploits on the Facebook page was just dumb.