Facebook holds a lot of precious moments and memories of so many people. You keep making memories and share it to Facebook so that your friends and relatives can also have a glimpse of it. You can also recollect all those special moments whenever you log in to your Facebook account and look back to those pictures. But have you ever thought of what happens to your Facebook account when you die? No one wants to think about that actually. Facebook takes care of that too and has a proper policy to memorialize Facebook account of the deceased person.
If someone from your Facebook family and friends have passed away and their account is still active, here are the available options.
Legacy contacts are those selected by the deceased person before their death. It can be a family member or a friend who can manage the person’s account after their death.
Legacy Contacts are:
If you don’t want to choose a legacy contact before you die, no one will be allowed to manage your Facebook account and they can only memorialize it.
Now, if the person has passed away without setting up a legacy contact, you can still ask Facebook to memorialize their account. Facebook knows the importance of a profile for the deceased person’s family and friends.
Facebook verifies requests but the requestor need not be the decedent’s executor or a family member. Anyone can submit the request form. This is done to ensure that memorialization takes place at the right time.
It can be done by filling a form in the help section and requesting Facebook to put the account in a memorialized state. Once Facebook approves it, the account becomes restricted to friends only and the sensitive information is removed, if any. However, profile and wall will be kept active so that the friends & family can post memories and pay condolences.
The word ‘Remembering’ will be used in front of the memorialized account’s name. The account will not show up in Facebook ads, people you may know section and no reminders will be sent on the person’s birthday. This also prevents the account from getting hacked as memorialized accounts cannot be logged into anytime.
A close family member of the deceased person can also request Facebook to remove their profile completely.
For this purpose, you have to fill the Special Request for Deceased Person’s Account form. You will need to provide the deceased person’s full name, email address, date of death and the URL of their Timeline. You will also need to provide proof that you are an immediate family member by showing a birth certificate, death certificate, or proof of authority.
The deceased person can mention in your will that who will access the information on your Facebook account and Facebook will respect their decision afterwards. Whoever has been instructed by the deceased person will be allowed to download the account information after presenting the prior authorization or court order.
There is no specific procedure that has to be followed that lets you memorialize your Facebook page. Once the Facebook account has been memorialized and no one has access to it, the connected pages will stay there but there will be no activity on that. In case, it has been requested by the deceased person’s family or friends to delete the concerned Facebook account, the linked Facebook pages will also be taken down.
Contact Facebook help if you weren’t able to memorialize Facebook account of a family person (deceased).
