![images[5]](http://girlsintech.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/images52.jpg)
As many of you know I was in a rear end accident two weeks ago. I was stopped at a red light and the other driver (probably on his phone), slammed into me going about 30 miles per hour. Over $10,000 in damages to my car and many doctors and x-rays later, I am still not feeling 100%. As an avid tweeter http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/and facebooker http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/02/fastest-growing-demographic-on-facebook-women-over-55/, I decided to take to the internet while in my state of bed rest. I complained about the accident and the pain I was in and was moved by the loving responses of so many family and friends.
About a week after the accident, I continued with my online conversations remarking on the ongoing pain and headaches, as well as the irony of living in LA, and the fact that the gentleman who hit me happened to be marginally famous. A friend from high school commented on one of my facebook posts with a warning. She had been in a similar accident a year prior with another more famous actor. She told me (off my wall) that during the discovery process for her case, the opposing attorney entered her facebook updates as evidence that she was in fact filing a fraudulent claim. I immediately removed every accident related post and tweet.
I began to get angry with the thought that something that so drastically affected my life was something that, for legal purposes, I should not share with my family and friends on my social media properties. Heeding the warnings on my employment 2.0 blog posted several months ago, I found that for the first time, I had to censure myself on the web and I didn’t like it one bit.
The fact remains that twitter and facebook information is in the public domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain and there is no expectation of privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy. This means that if you have been involved in a car accident and claim that as a result you can no longer participate in the activities you normally do, a smart defense attorney will do a background search on you online and determine whether or not you have posted incriminating information about yourself in the lawsuit. So be warned once again, information that you put online will likely be discoverable, so do so at your own risk.
