Just about everyone you know engages in some form or another of social media.
Whether it is sharing, tweeting, pinning, checking in, many people love to live in the social world.
With that being said, what happens when people are too social? Can it end up causing them more problems than they anticipated? Might it also lead to lost finances and even jail time in some cases?
One only has to pick up the newspaper, watch the television news, or go online to learn of cases where people being a little too social cost them more than they bargained for.
A few examples include:
* Florida’s Collier County Sheriff’s Office and Naples (Fla.) Police Department have used social media to nab several criminals. Authorities reported that several people in the county were taken into custody after posting evidence online of their alleged crimes. Meantime, one male was arrested after taking to Twitter to brag about beating up a neighbor. Finally, another man was taken to jail after using Facebook to post images of puppies for sale, only the puppies were in fact stolen from another individual;
* Also in Florida, a St. Lucie County woman was arrested and convicted last year after filing a claim with her auto insurance provider, stating a hit-and-run driver damaged her vehicle. Once investigators looked into the claims, they found comments on her Facebook page noting that her daughter was the one responsible for the accident. Meantime, following a traffic accident in Tampa, police discovered that two individuals who had been in separate vehicles in a crash had listed each other as “friends” on Facebook, with one even referencing the accident on the site. Once investigators confronted the two policyholders with the details, they confessed. In the event a policyholder’s social media profile is private, a court can sign off on an order permitting access to the profile for a period of time;
* In Arkansas, an appeals court ruled that images on Facebook and Myspace of a male “drinking and partying” were admissible in court as evidence to deny the individual additional workers compensation claims. The individual suffered a hernia in March of 2009 after a refrigerator fell on him while working at his employer’s warehouse showroom in Pine Bluff. The worker, who was compensated for medical expenses and received temporary total-disability benefits for more than a year, was trying to obtain an extension of benefits following three surgeries as a result of the injury. Key to his appeal was his request that the court prohibit the party photos. In his appeal, the claimant’s legal team argued the photos were unrelated to medical treatment and “a disgrace to the dignity of the workers compensations proceedings and the legal system.” Instead, the appeals court agreed with prior rulings, which turned down a request for additional treatment after diagnostic tests showed “no recurrent hernia and surgery to explore the scrotum” and saw no abuse by the courts in allowing the photos. In denying the man’s request for more compensation and treatment, the court ruled in favor of the use of Facebook photos as evidence;
* In Virginia, an arson suspect found out this summer that he would remain in jail, accused of setting three fires in a housing community. Authorities were led to the individual after he
bragged to friends about burning down the structure via social media sites Facebook and Tumblr;
* Lastly, even the military monitors social media in order to make sure soldiers are not running afoul of their duty to country. In separate cases, military officials reported they have used Facebook to hunt down soldiers who went AWOL, including one who was updating his status local via his iPhone. In another instance, a soldier who denied he had partaken in under age drinking, was nailed after photos on social media of him at a party with a beer in hand surfaced.
As you can see, social media should be used wisely, especially if you stand to suffer the ultimate consequences from your tweeting, sharing, checking in and more.
Photo credit: information-facts.com