Have you ever put any thought into who you’d trust with managing your Facebook profile when you pass away?
I can’t blame you if that has never crossed your mind before, but now Facebook is asking you to think about it with the introduction of the Legacy Contact feature.
Now you can choose who will manage your Facebook profile after you die by selecting them as your legacy contact. Once Facebook has been notified that an individual has died, his or her account will be memorialized. When an account is memorialized, a legacy contact will then be able to take over with limited access to the account.
A legacy contact will be able to do things like update the profile picture and cover photo, as well as write a post that will be displayed at the top of the profile’s timeline. A legacy contact can also respond to new friend requests.
In addition, a legacy contact may be granted permission to download an archive of photos, posts, and profile information that the deceased individual shared on Facebook. Other than that, all other settings will remain the same as before. A legacy contact does not get full access to the account.
If you don’t want to hand you account over to someone else, you can instead select an option for your account to be permanently deleted after you die.
Selecting A Legacy Contact
To select a legacy contact, first open your settings — then choose Security and then Legacy Contact at the bottom of the page.
If you want, you can choose to send your legacy contact a message after selecting them. From there, you can choose whether or not to give them permission to download the archive of your information that I mentioned earlier.
Setting up a legacy contact is an entirely optional feature, which will first be rolled out in the US before expanding to other countries. Memorialized accounts will now be indicated with a “Remembering” label above the individual’s name.
