Forget about writing your will; you’ve got to make sure your Facebook profile is in good hands before you kick the bucket.
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Facebook has implemented a new policy beginning Thursday that allows a user to name a “legacy contact” — a friend or family member — who will manage his or her account in the event of death, according to USA TODAY.
Previously, the social media site had simply “memorialized” accounts belonging to individuals who had passed away. Though the pages could still be viewed on Facebook, there existed no power to edit it.
“We heard from family members who wanted to post funeral information or download and preserve photos,” explained Facebook product manager Vanessa Callison-Burch. “We realized there was more we could do.”
An assigned legacy contact can make a final post on the profile of the deceased, as well as respond to friend requests (apparently, you can make friends even after you die), change cover and profile photos, update the profile and archive posts and photos.
You might feel far from death, but you can assign your postmortem Facebook manager at anytime by selecting “settings” in the drop-down menu on the righthand side, going to “security” and editing “legacy contact.”
A legacy contact will only be able to manage the assigned Facebook page after the social media company confirms the death. Though the contact can make changes as listed above, he or she will not have the authority to actually log into Facebook as the deceased or view private messages to the account.
