Internet as a Claims Tool

The Internet is an endless source of information, some of which may have value during the course of a disability claim evaluation. It may help to think of the Internet as a giant garage full of items that have been placed there over a long period of time. Some were put there just moments ago and some are gathering dust off in a dark corner that has not seen the light of day in many years. Trying to retrieve a needed item from this garage can be a time-consuming and frustrating venture if you don’t know how or where to look and especially if you are not exactly sure what you are looking for.

In addition to the time constraints outlined above, insurance company legal departments may cringe at the thought of employees “on the web” during company time for fear of viewing or sharing inappropriate information. Nonetheless, given the inherent value we have gained from access to the Internet for the purpose of assisting claim evaluations, we are advocates of finding some agreeable avenue for this access. Also, given the fact that we have uncovered claim fraud through “social media” sites, “hate” sites and “adult” sites; there should be some resource within your company to achieve “unrestricted” access. For the purposes of this article, we are primarily covering free, public records.

With all that said, it is important to have rules and accountability around such a resource and each company will need to develop its own set of parameters. The company may want to designate just one or a small number of people or just one or a small number of computers to this activity.

One of the pitfalls of the novice “surfer” is one interesting piece of information leads to another and another but not to anything concrete or useful. It is easy to get distracted into thinking that useful information is “just around the corner.” The rule of thumb here is that after five or ten minutes, tops, you should be getting more and more specific details related to your particular subject. If that is not happening, it is time to move on.

Anyone who has heard of the Internet is also aware of the famous Google search. This is still a great place to start. We recommend the advanced search or quotes around the search input to narrow the results. We completed a recent claim audit where we found information demonstrating work-related activity for the company’s largest liability claim using a simple Google search and about five minutes of sorting through results.

For more specific examples, see the following items below:

1. http://www.ghin.com/lookups/index.html - A website devoted to golf handicaps. If your claimant with a back problem is playing a full round of golf several times a week, you may want to look into this further. Interestingly, dates of play are posted and it is possible to develop a pattern of dates and locations played.
2. http://www.bowl.com/ - Bowling Scores – Similar to the golf site above.
3. http://usppa.com/ - Pool/billiards website similar to above.
4. http://www.betterwhois.com/ - Website ownership. Does it appear that your claimant may have some business activity generated from a website? This site may assist you in verifying the owner of the site and how long it has been in use.
5. http://www.archive.org/index.php (a.k.a. “The Wayback Machine”) This has come in handy when a claimant took down a site while we were investigating it. This site allows you to back over the years and view snapshots of what the site looked like over different points of time.
6. myspace.com / twitter.com / facebook.com – Most of these social media sites have filters the user can place on them to protect their information however, due to their “social” aspect, many users do not employ the filters. Accordingly, this is information put out for public consumption. Thanks to Twitter, we now have a nation of informants. One of our claimants had a friend put up a blog post (complete with photo of our claimant) about some work activity they were performing together and then “tweet” about it. Since I was running a continual search for the claimant’s name on Twitter, I was automatically notified when it happened.
7. http://www.blackbookonline.info/index.html This is an aggregate of available public record databases. Good starting point, created by the author of “The Investigator’s Little Black Book 3.” Examples include verification of a valid SSN, identification of an address as a mail drop vs. residence/business, news searches (including hometown newspapers for local stories that may have impacted your claimant), etc. Most sources are free, some tell you if they have information or not and let you decide if its worth paying for.
8. http://www.legacy.com/NS/ - Obituaries Search
   

It is important to note that the vast majority of information gleaned from the internet should be seen simply as a lead to develop more information. It is helpful to think about it like an annual physical with your doctor. You go in good health but they still check for all sorts of things to “rule out” any problems that merit further evaluation.