Facebook users in the US have been able to nominate someone to manage their account pages after they pass away – allowing it to be turned into a sort of memorial, if desired – but the company has only just now started rolling the option out for UK users.
Until now, there’s been a basic memorial account, but people weren’t able to access or update it at all. Now, it’s fully updateable by a nominated friend or family member.
Once Facebook has been informed that someone has died, it memorializes the account and shows the nominated person a ‘manage’ button on that page, which they can use to write a post at the top of the memorial timeline, change the profile picture and cover photo and respond to friend requests.
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You can also opt to give the legacy contact the option to download an archive of all your content and posts shared on Facebook – they won’t get access to private messages though.
To nominate your legacy contact, you can choose ‘Security’ and then ‘Legacy Contact’. If you don’t want to give access to your account to someone else to manage, you can also request that Facebook permanently deletes your account after you die.
➤ Adding a Legacy Contact [Facebook]
Read next: Now any mobile network can sign up to Facebook’s Internet.org
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