Insurance for Internet Dating and Social Networking

Countless numbers of people have found love, friendship, and business contacts through social networking and internet dating sites. However, we also hear of the horror stories involving people that are physically harmed. You, the owners of these very profitable websites, are constantly balancing the risk vs. the reward of operating your company.

Right now you are trying to mitigate your risk by making your site as safe as possible. This is a great thing, because no one wants your clients to get hurt more than you. Social media is not a zero sum game when we're talking about assault and battery. Your client loses and you lose. One person gets hurt and it could all be over. Can your company withstand a multimillion dollar lawsuit?

Well finally there is an insurance solution for internet dating and social networking websites. It comes in the form of an endorsement to some internet liability policies for contingent bodily injury coverage. Internet liability insurance is the policy that covers a company for their internet activities. For the most part this covers invasion of privacy and intellectual property infringement. For more about internet liability insurance please read my article titled, Insurance 2.0 in Website Magazine's Issue 11.

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/articles/internet_liability_insurance.aspx

Many internet liability policies have many specific exclusions in there for bodily injury, property damage, violations of statutes and regulations, mass communications, and other hot-button items. But, some of these exclusions can be taken out my endorsement. You need to read your policy and discuss with your agent, the full list of exclusions and endorsements. The Contingent Bodily Injury Coverage Endorsement deletes the exclusion found in many policies for claims of bodily injury brought against the insured company. So what does this mean in real life?

XYZdating.com operates like many other dating website. Users post their profiles and can chat and meet up if they choose. Two users schedule a date. On the date there is a sexual assault. The criminal proceedings take place, but the victim also decides to launch a civil suit against XYZdating.com. XYZdating.com may or may not be found liable in the suit. However, even if they are not found liable, defending the suit could cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. This endorsement provides the duty to defend and a sublimit for any reward settlement.

This is a very basic example but it could easily take place with dating websites, social networking or business networking websites. And the endorsement can be added to some internet liability policies. There are other very important endorsements and conditions that should be taken into consideration for social media website and dating websites. I hope to have future articles going over Intellectual Property Infringement, and how it relates to User generated content. Also making sure you have coverage for regulatory action including violations of local, state and federal privacy acts. As well as cyber extortion, crisis management and public relations expense, business income for network interruption and privacy liability including paper documents.

Andrew Cohn will be giving a presentation on the topic of Bodily Injury coverage for Internet Dating and other forms of social media at the 6^th Annual Internet Dating Conference at the Miami Beach Convention Center, January 22-23, 2009. For more information please go to www.idate2008.com/innerpage-miami.php.

For more information about obtaining internet liability insurance for your company please contact me, Andrew Cohn at alcohn@wwfins.com .