What you share on social media can come back to haunt you

By LegalMatters Staff • If you are involved in a criminal case, don’t post information about it on social media.

That is the advice of Ottawa criminal lawyer Céline Dostaler, who says she has seen cases where the accused’s tweets or emails are used against them in court because they verify the person was involved in some sort of illegal activity.

“I always tell clients not to post anything online about their case, witnesses or the complainant,” says Dostaler. “They need to understand that almost anything they write can be retrieved, including on platforms such as Snapchat where messages are deleted after 24 hours.”

She recalls one case where a client was accused of sexual assault. A woman alleged he extorted her into having sex by threatening to expose a secret about her. 

She kept the Snapchat messages that seemed to support the allegation. But Dostaler successfully argued in court that is nearly impossible to determine if there was any information missing from that Snapchat conversation. Since it was clear that some comments were not being shown, she was able to convince the court that the images did not accurately reflect the entire conversation.

“Social media messages play a big role in the majority of the cases I am involved in,” says Dostaler. “People tend to document their thoughts and actions online, and that can come back to haunt them.”