What Happens to a Facebook Account After Death? – Learn how to memorialize a Facebook account
Death is inevitable, it’s a debt all living must pay. Out of the 7 billion people in the world, 1 billion use or are active on Facebook. People die every day including the ones with Facebook accounts. Knowing how to memorialize a Facebook account is one of the ways in which we can preserve the memories of a friend, family or loved one after their passing.
What is a Memorialized Account?
As seen on Facebook, “Memorialized accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away. Memorializing an account also helps keep it secure by preventing anyone from logging into it.” Outlined below are the features of a Memorialized Account:
“Remembering” will be shown after the person’s name on their Facebook profile
Depending on the individual’s privacy settings, friends can share memories on the memorialized person’s timeline
Anything posted by the deceased person before stays on Facebook and is visible to the audience it was shared with
A memorialized profile won’t appear in suggestions for new friends, ads, etc.
No one logs into a Memorialized Account
There has to be a legacy contact for a Memorialized Account to be changed.
How to Memorialize a Facebook Account
It’s a sad thing we all must die. I get teary-eyed seeing the profile of those who have passed away on Facebook, friends and family can’t just help it by posting remembrance messages on their walls. To memorialize a dead person’s account, a request on behalf of the person has to be done here.
If you do not want to memorialize and you would like to delete the deceased’s account completely, go here to make a special request.
Setting Up a Legacy Contact on Facebook
As seen on Facebook, “A legacy contact is someone you choose to look after your account if it’s memorialized”. A legacy contact can be added whilst a person is still alive. Once an account is memorialized, the legacy contact can: write a pinned post on the memorialized profile, respond to friend request, update profile picture and cover photo and download a copy of your Facebook archive as written here (provided you gave them the option when setting up a legacy contact).
Go to your account settings as shown below:
Click on Security, then scroll down to Legacy Contact.
Enter the name of the contact and click Add. The person will be notified. If you do not want a Facebook account after your passing, you can choose to have you account deleted here also. You must be 18+ to set up a select a legacy contact.
A Legacy Contact cannot:
Log into your account
Read your messages
Remove any of your friends
Remove any post or photo shared by you.
This is how to memorialize a Facebook account and set-up a Legacy contact.
I believe this is a very insightful post, do feel free to share with your Facebook friends so they also benefit from this post. God be with the bereaved.
