In the digital age of right here, right now, it is commonplace to share your life online with friends and family through the use of social media. However, the pictures, videos, check-ins at locations, and the words you post leave a digital footprint that could later be used against you. By documenting your vacation, birthday, wedding, or your “Sunday Funday” activities, you may be unknowingly exposing yourself to the prying eyes of a later legal opponent. In the event that you find yourself in a lawsuit, your entire digital life will become Exhibit A for the opposing parties, lawyers, and their insurance carrier. If you find yourself in the midst of a potential lawsuit, making these social media changes is too late! Your attorney is bound by the following Florida Bar Rule and may not assist or advise you in altering your social media accounts at that time.
RULE 4-3.4 FAIRNESS TO OPPOSING PARTY AND COUNSEL:
A lawyer must not:(a) unlawfully obstruct another party’s access to evidence or otherwise unlawfully alter, destroy, or conceal a document or other material that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is relevant to a pending or a reasonably foreseeable proceeding; nor counsel or assist another person to do any such act;
In the simplest terms, any social media content that could be relevant to the dispute cannot be removed or altered to destroy potential evidence. Doing so could expose you to sanctions by the Court, and may be more harmful to your case than the offending post.
While the Florida Bar and the Courts have issued strict ethical and legal guidelines against the “cleansing” of social media accounts during pre-suit and active litigation, we HIGHLY recommend taking the following steps now to ensure that future legal issues aren’t complicated by your online life.
- Only accept friend requests from people you know and routinely audit your friends list.
- Check your privacy settings and preview your accounts as a public visitor to your profile to ensure prior posts are restricted to the correct audience. You can review Facebook’s procedure here: Who can see previous posts on my timeline on Facebook?
- Review photos and locations you have been tagged in.
- Remove posts that disclose private information such as your date of birth, full legal name, or unpublished phone numbers.
