Several weeks ago Quebec, Canada woman Nathalie Blanchard made headlines when she went public with her fight against Manulife, the insurance company that provided her with disability benefits for a year and a half because of depression. Manulife stopped issuing the disability benefits when they found searched through her facebook pictures and found her having a good time on vacation.
Whether Nathanlie’s pictures showed that she is no longer depressed is one question that some people are asking, whether depression should even qualify someone for social security disability is another debate that this story has sparked but the biggest question is how private are our facebook accounts?
Most people, including myself assumed that only friends and depending on your setting those in your network can view. I was surprised yesterday when I logged in to my facebook account and a new privacy setting box popped up and all of my information was defaultly set to “everyone”. I changed all of it to friends only. Hopefully this actually does make my profile private! I know I share information about my family on this blog but it is mainly vague information while on facebook I share information only intended for real friends.
It is scary to think that insurance companies and governments can look at our profiles eventhough I don’t have anything to hide! I do however think that police should be able to look through facebook profiles to aid with investigations.
December 15th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Mine was already set to secret. That freaks me out too.
Disability for depression is another story. . .wouldn’t working help cure depression or at least make it more manageable?
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January 10th, 2010 at 1:35 am
Heck she definitely should not have lost it. Horrible.
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