Somebody told you insurance companies hire investigators, and now you are checking parked cars on your own street. It is a horrible feeling and it changes how you move through an ordinary day.
Insurers and defence lawyers in Canada can lawfully watch and record you in public during an injury claim, including video, photographs and social media. They cannot trespass, record inside your home or look through your windows. Surveillance is used selectively rather than on everyone, and being filmed doing something does not by itself end a claim.
The rest of this article is about that last sentence, because almost everything written on this subject is written by law firms looking for a case, and the advice they give tends to be some version of live as though you are being watched. That is a miserable instruction and it is not the right one.
Can an insurance company legally watch you in Canada?
Yes, within limits. Observation of activities happening in public, or visible from a lawful vantage point, is permitted. An investigator may record you leaving your house, driving, walking, shopping, carrying bags, doing yard work, attending appointments or socializing.
What they cannot do is trespass on your property, record inside your home, look through your windows or harass you. Those cross into your reasonable expectation of privacy, and surveillance conducted that way can be challenged.
This is not unique to car accident claims. Workers' compensation files and long-term disability claims use the same tools.
Who actually gets put under surveillance?
Not everyone, and this is worth holding onto.
Insurers describe surveillance as selective rather than routine, used where there is credible reason to question a claim. It becomes more likely when the financial stakes are high, when the injury is one that cannot be seen on imaging such as chronic pain or a psychological injury, or when something in the file already looks inconsistent.
That last trigger is the one you have some influence over, and it is not about your behaviour. It is about whether your file tells one coherent story or several slightly different ones told to different people on different days.
Can insurers look at your social media?
Yes, and this is now more common than someone sitting in a car.
Public posts, photographs, videos, comments and content other people have tagged you in can all be reviewed. A holiday photo, a friend's post from a wedding or a picture of you at a family barbecue can be pulled into a file with no context attached to it.
Tighten your privacy settings and ask family not to tag you. Do not delete existing posts once a claim is underway, because deleting material can create a much worse problem than the material itself. Speak to a lawyer before removing anything.
Does being filmed doing something end your claim?
Usually not, and understanding why is the most useful thing in this article.
Surveillance captures a moment. A claim is about a pattern. Footage becomes damaging when it fairly contradicts what you have reported, and it means very little when it shows an isolated activity that says nothing about your pain afterwards, your endurance, your consistency, your flare-ups or your capacity to do a job week after week.
Someone who has said they cannot lift anything, filmed carrying heavy materials for an hour, has a real problem. Someone who has said lifting causes pain that lasts for days, filmed carrying one bag of groceries to a car, has no problem at all, provided the record shows what those groceries cost them.
That is the whole defence, and it cannot be built afterwards. A note written on a Tuesday saying you carried the shopping, could not straighten up by evening and lost most of Wednesday is worth more than any explanation offered a year later, because it existed before anyone was arguing about it.
Should you change what you do?
Change what you report, not what you do.
The advice to avoid anything that might be misinterpreted quietly asks you to stop recovering. Your treatment plan almost certainly tells you to walk, to stretch, to do prescribed exercises and to return to normal activity gradually. Doing those things is consistent with an injury claim rather than against it. Being filmed doing your physiotherapy exercises is being filmed following medical advice.
Two things genuinely matter.
Be precise rather than sweeping. Never is a word that gets tested. "I cannot lift" invites a single clip to contradict you. "I can lift a kettle, I cannot lift my toddler, and anything heavier than the shopping costs me the next day" is accurate, is far harder to contradict and is also what is actually true for most people.
Say the same thing to everyone. Your family doctor, your physiotherapist, your adjuster, an assessor and your own record should describe the same limits. Inconsistency between them does more damage than any video, and it usually comes from tiredness or politeness rather than from anyone being untruthful.
What you should not do is stop living. Refusing to go to your niece's wedding because you might be photographed is a real cost paid against a hypothetical, and isolation makes recovery worse. Go, sit down when you need to, leave early if you have to and write down what the day cost you.
What should you record?
The pattern, because the pattern is what a moment cannot show.
- What you did each day, including the ordinary things you managed
- What it cost you afterwards, that evening and the following day
- Activities you attempted and had to stop, and at what point
- Good days honestly recorded as good days
- Anything you did on medical advice, noted as such
- Help you needed, who gave it and for what
Point four matters more than people expect. A record showing only bad days reads as a document built for a claim. A record showing that you had a good week in March, went back to work for four days and then could not manage the fifth is credible, human and far stronger.
The Pain and Symptom Tracker is built for exactly this, a daily record of what you did and what it cost. The Medical Appointment Tracker, Free Starter Edition covers what you told each professional, which is where consistency is either built or lost.
Read next
- What happens at an independent medical examination
- What a physiotherapist writes in their report
- How to document injuries after a car accident
Last verified August 2026. This article is general information for people in Canada and is not legal advice. If you are dealing with surveillance evidence in an active claim, speak to a lawyer.