Big Brother insurance companies

[David Bird]

I read an article a week or so ago (Cant remember where) re Insurance . When you insure your car sometimes the insurance company asks wether you are a member of motor clubs enabling you to get a degree of discount, in telling the company you are a member of a certain club you give them cause to watch over what you write in the forums ie How fast you drove - a modification you made etc etc .Apparently they can then keep this info on file to be used negatively for you in event of making a claim.

 

[Colin_b]

I read an article a week or so ago (Cant remember where) re Insurance . When you insure your car sometimes the insurance company asks wether you are a member of motor clubs enabling you to get a degree of discount, in telling the company you are a member of a certain club you give them cause to watch over what you write in the forums ie How fast you drove - a modification you made etc etc .Apparently they can then keep this info on file to be used negatively for you in event of making a claim.

Kind of assumes there is some sort of link between your real name and your posting name....

If they asked me I'd say Brake

 

[Carrsey]

Think this is more of a problem when using insurance companies that sponsor the relevant club. I know on a lot Ford/Vhall type performance clubs everyone likes to list their mods in their sigs, which is fina as long as you have told the insurer all about them, often the problem comes with the lads listing thing like decats..

 

[David Bird]

Possibly their IT wizards can hack other info to tie user name to your real name .Prob best to constantly claim your car is standard and that you drive to the law.

 

[moonloops]

More likely they look at reg plates on photo's of modded cars on the formums.

If it was me I would also extract the meta data from photos to see if the GPS coordinates of a photo of a modded car tied back to their home address or neighbourhood.

 

[Harrythedog]

I always drive very slowly and leave big gaps in front of me (just in case)

 

[Carrsey]

I always drive very slowly and leave big gaps in front of me (just in case)

Me to and i only use genuine cleaning products, just incase they are classed as a mod..

 

[Igurisu]

Sorry but I don't believe insurance companies employ people and pay salaries for trawling through internet forums. I'd be amazed if that could be cost effective.

 

[markjay]

This would be done using bots that trawl the car forums and produce a list if 'suspect' posts based on various criteria.

 

[Dieselman]

More likely they look at reg plates on photo's of modded cars on the formums.

If it was me I would also extract the meta data from photos to see if the GPS coordinates of a photo of a modded car tied back to their home address or neighbourhood.

I wasn't aware that cameras used GPS.


Learn something everyday...

 

[moonloops]

Sorry but I don't believe insurance companies employ people and pay salaries for trawling through internet forums. I'd be amazed if that could be cost effective.

Nope they wouldn't - best guess is their loss adjusters are paid bonuses based on the amount of claims that are thrown out..

 

[Palfrem]

http://www.mbclub.co.uk/forums/general-discussion/145511-average-yearly-mileage.html

They're probably trawling this thread!

 

[st4]

I wasn't aware that cameras used GPS.

Learn something everyday...

Images can be Geotagged

In short an insurer won't bother trauling a forum. They'd have to work to the assumption that people actually post factual information about themselves and the car they drive.

Given this place, I really doubt that would be an effective course of action for them to take....

 

[Kris-H]

Nope they wouldn't - best guess is their loss adjusters are paid bonuses based on the amount of claims that are thrown out..

Nope ... Claims staff are paid a salary no bonus at all for money saved , claims repudiated or frauds detected ...

Just a really bad urban Myth

At one stage in the early days of Max Power, before they started blanking the plates, I did get one of my staff to run the reg numbers of "featured cars" through our claims system to see if any were insured with us.

Out of 10 issues of the magazine I seem to recall we found 4 cars that were insured with us, one of whom had declared their modifications, the other 3, according to the information given when they took out the policy were "standard and unmodified"

 

[Kris-H]

and of course ..at the end of the day if you have nothing to hide, where is the problem ?