Warning about posting photos of holiday voids home insurance? Fact Check

A warning is circulating social media that claims your home insurance will be void if you post your holiday photos on social media.

The warning, which has been spreading since 2018, claims that your insurance documents may state that posting holiday photos while you’re away will lead to your insurance claim being voided if you are burgled.

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An example of the warning can be seen below.

⚠️BE AWARE FOLKS⚠️… A colleague went away and house was ransacked and to cut a long story short the insurance would not pay out as she had blatantly posted pictures on Facebook which sometimes shows your destination. Apparently there is something in her small print on her insurance documents about social media whilst you are away. Hubby checked ours and yes it basically says that your insurance is void if you advertise the fact you are absent from home so please be careful…. Copy and pasted

The crux of the warning is that posting holiday snaps while on vacation essentially advertises that your house is empty and vulnerable to being burgled.

There is certainly an element of truth in the above warning, but as with most things related to third party insurance, there is no “black and white”, and while the above warning may be accurate in some situations, it will not apply to every situation.

As such, we start with perhaps the most prudent advice. Read your home insurance documents, including all of the small print. Insurance companies inevitably differ in how they handle specific situations, with many taking a more relaxed approach to your social media antics, while others could very well use certain types of social media activity against you.

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Of course it largely depends on your home insurance company, and their specific policies. Not all insurance companies will void a home insurance claim based on social media posts. For example we spoke to Direct Line, one of the leading UK insurer companies who told us what you post online “… will not affect your claim whatsoever“. Another UK provider, Prudential, told us “we do not take social media posts into consideration when assessing claims“.

Other insurance companies we spoke to said that while they do not specifically mention or seek out social media posts, in extreme circumstances, ill-advised social media posts or poor privacy habits could fall foul of the more general “reasonable care” policy. Such a policy will generally state that homeowners must keep their homes reasonably secure. Traditionally this means securing windows and doors, but in extreme circumstances could potentially include what you make public on the Internet, again depending on the specific insurer.

This is why it would not necessarily be accurate to claim that posting snaps of your holiday abroad will automatically invalidate your home insurance. Home insurance companies don’t have any kind of special access to your social media accounts, especially if you apply strict privacy settings, such as the “friends only” setting on Facebook.

As such, the more careful you are with your social media privacy, the smaller the chance that an insurance company could A. see that you posted photos of your holiday and B. use that information to invalidate your claim. Of course it could also be said that the more careful you are with your social media privacy, the smaller the chance of being burgled as a result of what you post on social media in the first place, meaning it’s prudent advice to follow regardless.

So, for example, if you have your privacy settings wide open so anyone with an account can see what you post, and you explicitly state that you are currently on holiday, and post that information with your current address, then it is entirely possible that a specific insurer could claim that you have not taken reasonable care to protect your property, and consequently void your home insurance claim.

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On the other end of the spectrum, if you post a holiday snap on your social media profile, yet you have “friends only” setting applied, and the holiday snap does not reference your home address, then the chances of that post being seen by your home insurer are small, and smaller still is the chance that it could end up invalidating your home insurance policy.

But of course, the priority here is to not get burgled in the first place. We always recommend employing the strictest privacy settings you can on your social media profile and avoid posting holiday snaps while you are on vacation if you’re leaving behind an empty house, as there are numerous past stories where this has ended up in the person on holiday being burgled, in some cases even if the person on holiday had their privacy set to “friends only”.

And to reiterate our first piece of advice – always read all of your home insurance documents and if you have any questions regarding your insurer’s policy on social media, contact them directly.