Legacy Contact: Facebook’s way of telling Rest In Peace
Ever wondered what happens to your Social Media accounts after you die? Not really. You usually don’t think about this and old people who are about to die may or may not have social media accounts or they are not that addicted to posting every minute detail of their life. Just imagine your grandmother posting a selfie of her pouting on the deathbed and posting a status like “On the deathbed” with 2 others.
How funny does it sound? But, these thoughts do cross some people’s mind who are obsessed with the social media and at the same time are too afraid of death and what would happen after death. They need to make sure that their legacy would be carried forward after they die and just in time, Facebook comes up with this new feature called Legacy.
What is ‘Legacy Contact’?
Facebook just recently added ‘Legacy Contact’ where in you can hand over your legacy in the event of your death and that person will be able to handle your account for you when that happens and even memorialise for you. I am sure you are not thinking about your death, but we must be prepared for even the worst case scenario, in this case-death. Here, it will be easy for your friends or family to take care of your Facebook account if the circumstances arrive.
How to Set up a legacy contact?
You can follow these simple steps to set up a legacy contact on Facebook :
- Go to your account Settings > Security > Legacy Contact.
- Then type in the name of the person you would like to make your Legacy Contact.
- You have the option to send them a message to let them know, but it’s not required. Otherwise, they’ll notified when Facebook becomes aware of your passing.
- Then select whether your Legacy Contact will have Data Archiving permission and whether or not you’d like your account to be deleted.
Features of legacy contact:
Facebook will make it possible for your legacy contact to post at the top of your memorialised Timeline, respond to friend requests(if any) and even update profile pictures. Your legacy contact can download an archive of your pictures, posts and important information pertaining to your profile to keep it safe. And if you wish that once you are dead, your legacy contact should delete your account then you can set it up accordingly.
At the moment, Facebook has just provided this information about legacy contact and this feature is especially for the people you care for in your life. When you die, it is difficult for everyone and when you give this opportunity to someone to memorialise your account or delete it permanently it helps and do not hurt other people who come across your profile now and then and remember that you don’t exist anymore. This has more to do with the increasing number of accounts on Facebook whose owners are dead. We hope that this is a noble step from Facebook and they will earn some brownie points for legacy contact.
Dhruvil is a Writer & Marketeer for Nimblechapps, joining December 2014, based out of Sydney, Australia. He has worked briefly as a Branding and Digital Marketing Manager before moving to Australia. At Nimblechapps, he worked on Social Media Marketing, Branding, Email Marketing and Blogging. Dhruvil studies Business at University of Western Sydney, and also handles Operations for the company in Australia.