If you’re making a genuine personal injury claim in NSW, it can be unsettling to hear that the insurer might be checking your social media or even arranging surveillance to monitor your daily life.
However these tools are now common in personal injury, workers compensation and motor accident claims.
Why insurers use surveillance
Considering the amount involved in compensation claims, insurers and defendants often use surveillance to check whether your reported limitations match what you do day-to-day, and to investigate possible exaggeration or fraud.
Insurers use different forms of surveillance including physical surveillance, such as an investigator following you in public places and filming your activities and/or desktop surveillance, which aims are monitoring your online and social media activities.
For workers compensation, the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) expects surveillance to be a last resort , so essentially only where there is evidence of inconsistencies or possible misleading information, and not as a routine tactic.
How surveillance is used against you
Surveillance and social media monitoring are usually used to:
- Challenge your credibility
- Attack medical opinions
- Reduce or deny key heads of damage such as future earning capacity or care needs
Courts can treat this material as relevant evidence if it goes to the issues in dispute. For example, whether you really have ongoing incapacity, or whether you still enjoy activities you say you’ve given up.
A short clip or a single photo can be very powerful, even if it doesn’t show the pain flare-up afterwards, or the weeks of rest that follow.
What material can be used
In a NSW personal injury claim, anything you put online can potentially be treated as evidence, as long as it’s relevant to the issues in dispute. For example, your level of pain, your ability to work or how active you are day to day.
Courts and insurers don’t just look at your “public” profile. In practice, the following types of material may be requested or relied on:
- Posts, photos, videos, “stories” and reels on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and LinkedIn
- Captions, comments, replies and emojis that suggest how active, happy or social you are
- Check-ins, event attendance and travel posts that may contradict claims about your mobility or anxiety
- Direct messages and private chats on social media or messaging apps, which can be treated as documents and ordered to be produced in discovery or under subpoena if relevant
- Content about you posted by friends or family on their own accounts – insurers will often look there too
Importantly, Australian cases have confirmed that social media material can be discoverable and admissible even if you used strict privacy settings, provided it’s relevant to the questions before the court.
Beyond social media, insurers commonly rely on other everyday digital material, such as text messages, emails, photos, CCTV footage, fitness-tracker data and location information, where it sheds light on what you can actually do and how your injuries affect your life.
All of this is assessed under the same basic rule: if it’s relevant and reliably obtained, it may be used in your case.
Practical tips to protect your compensation claim
You do not need to hide or be afraid if your claim is legitimate, but you do need to be careful and consistent.
1. Be scrupulously honest
The single best protection is complete honesty:
- Don’t exaggerate your pain or limitations
- Don’t underplay activities you can still do
- Tell your doctors if you attempt something beyond your usual limits and how you pull up afterwards
If surveillance shows you doing something you’ve said is impossible, your credibility can be badly damaged and affect the outcome of your claim.
2. Tidy up how you use social media (but don’t destroy evidence)
General, common-sense steps include:
- Avoid posting about your injury, claim or the insurer
- Don’t post photos or videos of physical activities, nights out or travel while your capacity is in issue
- Ask friends and family not to tag you in posts that might be misunderstood
- Review your privacy settings so your content isn’t broadly public
Importantly, once a claim is started, don’t start deleting posts that could be relevant without getting legal advice. In some situations, destroying potential evidence can itself become a problem.
3. Remember: context matters
If you are filmed or photographed:
- A short clip won’t show how much you paid for that activity in pain or fatigue
- It may not show that you needed assistance before or after
- It may capture a “good day” during a long run of very bad days
Your lawyer can help explain that context through medical evidence and your own testimony, but it’s far easier if your reporting has been accurate from the beginning.
4. Tell your lawyer about any surveillance or online activity
If you suspect you’ve been followed, or you know there are photos and videos of you on social media that could be raised:
- Tell your lawyer early
- Be open about what the footage or posts show
- Work through how they fit with your symptoms and restrictions
Courts and tribunals expect personal injury claimants to be truthful; they don’t expect perfection. Honest, consistent evidence supported by solid medical opinion will usually carry more weight than a few seconds of footage.