Jim Rossman: What happens to your Facebook account when you die?

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I was doing some poking around in my Facebook account settings this week and I came across a setting that I needed to configure – the Legacy contact.

I hope you’re familiar with the setting, but I also hope you don’t have to use it for a very long time.

The Facebook Legacy Contact is a person who you designate to be able to administer your Facebook account after your death.

When a Facebook user dies, a request can be made to memorialize their account, which makes some changes, including adding the word “Remembering” before your name on your Facebook page.

Any family member or friend can send Facebook a memorialization request for a deceased user. There’s a place on the memorialization request to upload proof of death.

Friends can still post memories that’ll show up on the memorialized page, but that setting can also be turned off to “freeze” the page.

Posts and photos the person shared will stay on the page and will be visible to friends.

Memorialized profiles don’t appear in public spaces, such as People You May Know or Birthdays.

If there’s a Legacy Contact on the account, they are the only one that can make changes. If no Legacy Contact was named, no one will be able to log into the memorialized account.

To set up a Legacy Contact, log into your Facebook page and go to the Settings and Privacy and then Settings. Click on Accounts Center and find Personal Details under Account Settings.

Select Account Ownership and Control, click on Memorialization and select your account.

Choose Memorialize and then you can select your desired Legacy Contact from your friend list. You can also choose to let that Legacy Contact download your Facebook data. You can also choose to have a message sent telling your friend that you’ve chosen them as your Legacy Contact.

You don’t have to have Facebook send them a message if you’d rather tell them, which I recommend.

Finally, you don’t have to leave your account up on Facebook after you die. You can choose in the settings to just have your Facebook account deleted after your death.