Info on Facebook and Death

Feb 14, 2013 | 1 comment

Facebook logoThere’s a great Mashable article on Facebook and death – “How 1 Billion People Are Coping With Death And Facebook.”

Wonder what happens to your profile when you die? Make sure someone can find your password information, or your family could be in a heap of trouble!

A few good tips from the story:

What Happens After We Die?

So what happens to all those suddenly abandoned profiles? Their fate could go one of four ways:

  • The profile remains untouched, unaccessed, unreported and therefore open to everyday wall posts, photo tags, status mentions and Facebook ads. In other words, business as usual.
  • A family member or close friend may choose to report a death to Facebook. Upon receipt of proof of death, such as a death certificate or local obituary, Facebook will switch the dead user’s timeline to a “memorial page.”
  • A close family member may petition Facebook to deactivate a dead user’s account.
  • Users may gain access to a dead user’s profile in one of two ways: either through knowledge of the dead user’s password, a practice against Facebook’s terms of service, or through a court subpoena. However, per Facebook’s privacy policy and strict state law, courts rarely grant outside access to said social data. More on that later.

The story includes online grieving, Facebook’s official policy for handling user deaths, and online interfacing with the dead.

Read the whole story on Mashable.

A Good Goodbye