How does Facebook affect your home insurance?
By Lana Clements 09.01.2012
If you're a social network fan, find out how it could be impacting your home insurance.
Many of us now live our lives through social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, telling friends and followers anything from who we want to win X factor, to what we last bought in Topshop. Social media has also become a prime outlet for emotions whether that's anger at shoddy customer service or excitement about a weekend trip to Paris.
But our use of Twitter and Facebook has also had consequences on even the most mundane areas of our lives, including home insurance.
The website please rob me became a hit in 2010 after it raised the issue of people unwittingly leaving themselves open to burglary through social media sites.
Putting your whereabouts online means it can easily fall into the hands of the wrong people – those that are prowling for easy opportunities to break into your property.
Gareth Kloet head of home insurance at Confused.com says: "Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information gathering even using Google Earth and Street View to plan their burglaries with military precision.
He adds: "Insurance providers are starting to take this into account when they are assessing claims and we may in future see insurers declining claims if they believe the customer was negligent."
In order to stay as safe as possible online you should avoid posting comments that reveal too much about where you live and if you are going to be away on holiday or even for a weekend. Remember that some applications such as twitter automatically identify your location if you have this feature switched on, so people can know where you are without you specifically mentioning it.
However, social media isn't all bad news for insurance customers. A few high-profile PR disasters have meant that many companies, including insurers, are starting to spend a lot of time and effort ensuring that when something goes wrong the story doesn't reach too many people via social media. So they're acting faster to solve potential problems and answer complaints that come in through twitter.
The people managing twitter feeds often have greater customer service authority than those in the call centres (and there's no chance of being transferred to India), so something that you couldn't get sorted on the phone, may actually be rectified if you take to twitter with much less effort on your behalf. Usually they will ask you to direct message (DM) your details so that they can look into the problem and call or email you back.
Insurers currently offering customer service feeds on twitter include: LV @lvcares, More Than @morethan and Swiftcover @swiftcover.
As well as being a tool for customer service, there are also some online tools and apps that allow you to manage your risk better or more conveniently access your policy. For instance, many insurers including Direct Line and Swiftcover have iPhone apps.
Legal and General has also created an online contents calculator to help you work out how much you should be insuring your contents for. It prompts you to think of valuables that may not immediately come to mind, as well as giving pointers and tips that will help you better understand your cover.
Or for a bit more fun, if you're a fan of the 'More Than Freeman' adverts you can also follow the character on twitter @morethanfreeman and Facebook for some very random, but also very chirpy tweets!