New Facebook policy to introduce social immortality

One may die, but that doesn’t mean their social presence has to die too. Last Thursday (Feb 12, 2015) Facebook has come up with a whole new policy that allows you to name a family member or a friend to be designated as your Facebook estate executor after you die. The person will be responsible for managing your account. Starting from today itself, users in the united states will have the option of picking a legacy contact who on your behalf will make a last post on Facebook. Also this contact would have the right to respond to friend requests, updating your profile and cover photos and archive your posts. Till now Facebook used to memorialize the account of the dead when informed about their death by the friends or family. This meant that the account could only be viewed but permission is not given to manage or edit it. Thousands of requests have been fielded by request since its start up in 2007 as said Jodi Seth (spokeswoman, Facebook).

Among those were the requests of family members who wanted to download photos or post information regarding funeral. Families have been struggling since long for the disposal of the deceased member’s digital assets. As per the reports from the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws only in less than a dozen states there exist laws that govern authority over such assets. One such law was passed in Virginia in 2013 that allowed the guardians to take the authority of the online accounts of their dead child. A Zogby Poll conducted in January revealed that majority of the people are concerned about their digital assets after they die. Out of 1012 people, 71 percent want their digital information to be kept private unless a prior consent is given and 43 percent want all to be deleted if there is no prior consent. Facebook’s users in United States can access the feature under settings from today.

The feature allows you to choose either to permanently delete your account after death or choose a legacy contact or do nothing with it. The death of a family member can be reported by filling out an electronic form available from the Facebook Help Center. Once the death of the person is confirmed, tagline “remembering” will be added over the name of the user and the legacy contact will be notified. However the legacy contact would not have the right to log in as the deceased or read his/her private messages. To designate a legacy contact, click the down side facing arrow on the right side of your page. From the drop down menu go to settings and then click security. There you can find the “Legacy Contact” option in the bottom part of the page. Choose a person from your friend list to be listed as your legacy contact. Then mark the options that your legacy contact can access. The system then offers you to notify that person through a message.