Could you be the next homeowner to have their insurance policy canceled due to drone surveillance?

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Home insurance is becoming more expensive and difficult to obtain across the country, and now homeowners have a new concern: drone flights. As the cost of coverage continues to rise, insurers are taking more and more steps to limit their potential losses. One such measure is using drones to inspect policyholders’ properties. This is leading to a wave of homeowners receiving cancellation notices due to drone footage.

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Imagine being a homeowner who has dutifully paid their premiums for decades without ever filing a claim. You might think that would make you the ideal policyholder. Then one day, you go to your mailbox and find a cancellation notice from your home insurance company. What’s more shocking than the cancellation itself is the grainy drone photo of your roof that’s cited as the reason for the cancellation.

That’s what recently happened to Mike Arman, a resident of Daytona Beach, Florida. He told the New York Post that his insurance policy was canceled after his insurance company flew a drone over his home and took photos that caused the company to say his roof looked “deteriorated.” At least that’s the explanation Arman’s insurance broker gave him, but Arman is still frustrated by the experience for a number of reasons.

First, Mike Arman had been a policyholder in good standing for over 50 years. Second, he felt that the drone photo of his roof that prompted the cancellation was poor quality. He told the New York Post that the photo itself appeared to have been taken from a significant distance by a “distant satellite.” However, the real problem for Mike Arman is that his roof was only six years old.

In most cases, the lifespan of a roof like the one Arman had installed on his home is 20 to 30 years. Naturally, he figured there must be a mistake, so he contacted his insurance company and asked them to send someone out to assess his roof in person. After the insurance company told him they “didn’t do house calls,” Arman sent his insurance company documents proving the relatively young age of his roof.

Unfortunately for Arman, none of this mattered to his insurer, who canceled his policy a few months later. The cancellation came at a most inopportune time. Florida is in the midst of a full-blown insurance crisis, with major insurers leaving the state and premiums for the remaining insurers increasing at a near-geometric rate.

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Millions of Florida homeowners like Arman now have no choice but to buy insurance from the state-sponsored Citizens Insurance Company. This time, Arman decided to be proactive and hire an inspector to certify his roof. Despite his home inspector’s approval, Arman received another nasty surprise in the mail the moment his Citizens insurance policy came up for renewal.

It turns out that Citizens also uses drones to inspect homes. After flying over his home, they decided to increase his premiums by 25%. For insurance companies and their shareholders, this drone home inspection policy seems like a good deal. Drone technology allows them to “visit” more homes than they ever could in person, and with the increased cost of claims coverage, proactively reducing risk allows them to continue operating.

On the other hand, homeowners like Arman feel like their insurers are “spying” on them and that the cancellation process lacks transparency. Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute (an industry-funded think tank) disagrees. He told Realtor.com that aerial photography “is a much less intrusive way to inspect your home than sending someone out there,” and he also believes it’s more accurate.

Friedlander concludes that drones can sometimes make mistakes, but he claims (without citing any data to support his conclusions) that aerial surveillance is “10 to 20 times more accurate” than inspections by human eyes. On the other hand, homeowners are shocked to learn that cancellations via aerial surveillance photos are even legal.

Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told the New York Post that “there’s a need to update insurance regulations. State laws haven’t been updated yet.” In the meantime, he recommends that homeowners take proactive steps to eliminate potential hazards in their yards in preparation for drone surveillance. “Don’t wait until you get a letter saying your policy won’t be renewed,” he added.

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Could This Article Be The Next Homeowner To Have Their Insurance Policy Canceled Due To Drone Surveillance? originally appeared on Benzinga.com