How Facebook and Social Media Are Affecting Service of Process

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, MySpace and blogging platforms like Blogger.com and WordPress.com have emerged on the social networking scene with rapid growth and significance. As more and more people seek to make themselves, and their personal lives, known to all who have an interest there is also the issue of lack of privacy.

This situation makes it easier for process servers and investigators to find people who they are trying to serve with legal documents. For example, I recently had accepted a service for a defendant. The client, however, did not have the defendant's address. I conducted a search for the defendant utilizing my subscription-based, people-locator service. The results of that search yielded nothing in the defendant's name. Had this situation occurred five years ago, I might have been stumped.

Today, however, we live in "social media" world; a world where, it seems, just about everybody is on-line and sharing everything from their latest trip to the coffeehouse, to what they watched on TV the night before.

I began a search for the defendant on all of the prominent social media networks and found loads of personal data on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. It was fairly easy to match her name, and contact information via the social media networks.

Still, the missing bit of information was her address. So, I sent her a message using the personal interests she listed, and after several exchanges, she revealed that she was an insurance agent. I then searched the public records and found her business address. She was personally served the next morning.

This brings me back to how the rise of social media sites are affecting the service of process in the world today.

As more and more social media sites arise, and as more and more people log-in, follow, and "friend" each other on these sites, the opportunity to find people who may otherwise be “laying low” will increase. With Facebook now boasting 500 million users, and Twitter hovering around 190 million users (to cite but two social media sites), and the vast majority of the users rarely thinking about privacy issues, it does not look like the masses will curtail their appetite to make their personal likes and interests known to the world; at least not until such time as there is a reversal in the outlook towards, and interest in, social media.

All current social media growth indicators suggest that is not likely in the foreseeable future.

Process Service Network, a legal support firm in the Los Angeles, CA area, has developed a worldwide network of process servers and private investigators. They have been international service of process specialists since 1978 and have handled over 1 million cases since that time.

Process Service Network can be found at http://www.processnet1.com/ or email at processnet@sbcglobal.net