By Heidi Beguin Have you thought about what happens to your social media accounts after you pass on? If you do nothing, and don’t share your password with anyone, your account stands the likelihood of getting hacked. If you don’t want to be hawking cryptocurrency after you pass away, there are steps you can take to ensure your account either gets deleted or you can appoint someone who will be able to manage the account for you. Many social media accounts are now helping people to make a choice about what happens with those accounts upon death.
According to facebook.com, memorializing an account also helps keep it secure by preventing anyone from logging into it. The following steps, taken directly from Facebook, will help you to decide what to do with your own account.
On your Facebook profile, there will be either three dashes in an upper corner or there will be a drop down arrow next to your name in the middle of the page. Click on Go to Accounts Center.
Click on Personal Details. Click on Account ownership and control. Click on Memorialization. If you haven’t done this, it will say Preference not selected. You’ll notice it also says Instagram and WhatsApp accounts are handled differently after death. There’s a place to click to learn more.
Click on your name. Now it’s time to make some choices. Facebook allows you to Memorialize your account which means that you must choose a legacy contact to manage your memorialized profile.
It also gives you the option to delete your account after death. Your main profile and any additional profiles will be permanently deleted after you pass away. You choose, but it also advises that memorialized accounts are a way for people on Facebook to remember the deceased.
If you decide to choose a legacy contact, you’ll be choosing someone to look after your profile once you pass away. This contact will be able to: manage tribute posts, which include deciding who can post and who can see posts, and removing tags. They can also request deletion of your profile, respond to new friend requests, and update your profile picture and cover photo. The legacy contact can only manage posts made after you pass away and they won’t be able to post as you or see your messages. There is a spot for you to search your Facebook friends to choose one as your legacy contact.
If you choose to delete your main profile after you pass away, Facebook reminds you that when someone lets them know that you passed away, all of your messages, photos, posts, comments, reactions, and info will be immediately removed from Facebook. No one will be able to see your profile. They go on to say, memorialized accounts can be a comforting place for people to remember the deceased. They strongly suggest discussing the decision to delete your account with family and friends.
Upon choosing a legacy contact, you must then choose between allowing that person to download a copy of your data archive or not. Your data archive includes posts, photos, videos, and info from the ‘about’ section of your profile, which might be content that wasn’t originally visible to your legacy contact. Messages won’t be included.
After saving, Facebook gives you a sample message that they will send to your legacy contact letting them know you chose them to do this. The text it sends mentions that they’ve been chosen to be your legacy contact if anything happens to you. It also says to let you know if they’d like to talk about it. You can send it or skip it.
This seems like a simple way to make sure your account is protected and people can still visit your page once you’ve passed away. Deletion or memorialization - you get to decide but by doing nothing, you leave your account open to hackers.