WASHINGTON — As Facebook continues to become a larger part of users’ lives, the social network is now letting users choose who will control their digital afterlife.
Starting Thursday, users can designate a “legacy contact” who will be able to manage certain parts of an account after Facebook learns that the user has died.
In the past, Facebook froze dead users’ accounts, which made it impossible for surviving family members to edit their loved one’s profiles.
Facebook is the latest social media site to enable users to control their data after they die. Last year, Google introduced “inactive account managers” — people appointed by a user, who will have access to Gmail, data storage, YouTube and other services.
The legacy contact has limited administrative rights — fewer rights than someone who knows your login and password information.
For instance, while a legacy contact can write a pinned post to share news of your death or plans for a memorial service, the contact is not able to remove or change past posts, photos and other things shared on your Timeline.
In addition, the legacy contact does not have the ability to read messages you’ve sent to friends, or remove any of your friends.
To select a legacy contact, go to Settings, choose Security, then click on Legacy Contact. You can only choose a person who is already a Facebook friend.
You can authorize the legacy contact to download your data, or to have your Facebook account deleted after you die.
Right now, a user can only choose one legacy contact, and no backup, according to the Wall Street Journal, although Facebook is considering how to allow for contingent legacy contacts.
If a user doesn’t choose to avail himself of a legacy contact, when Facebook is notified of a user’s death it will freeze an account and leave pictures and posts at the selected privacy level — a process it calls memorialization.
Facebook currently doesn’t show advertisements on memorialized accounts, and won’t show them on accounts maintained by a legacy contact.
A user can change a legacy contact at any point, but once a user dies, the responsibility cannot be handed down to another person.
