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Preventing eternal life on the Internet

They say that once you put something on the Internet, it’s there forever. Anyone who has any form of social media is theoretically pulling a Lord Voldemort, in that part of them can live eternally. But what exactly happens to social media accounts when people die?

There have been plenty of stories on various blogs about parents setting up a social media contract of sorts with their children so that when they come of age, they’ll have access to their own personal accounts. What we do not see as much is the end-of-life social media planning.
Recently, Facebook created a new feature where users can designate a “Legacy Contact” where, in the event of death, that contact will be able to decide what becomes of their Facebook page.

Call it a “social media will.”

With this new feature, Legacy Contacts can choose to run a person’s profile as a memorial page rather than a normal Facebook profile. For example, my profile would say “Remembering Kristin DiMaggio,” with my legacy contact being the only one able to change my profile photo or pin posts on my timeline. There would be no way they could log into my actual account and see old private messages and things of that sort.

Facebook may be the first to think ahead for its users in this way. Google’s “Inactive Account Manager” is somewhat similar to this in that users can decide whether they want to have their data deleted after three, six or 12 months of inactivity, according to sfgate.com.

Twitter’s terms make it a bit more difficult to wipe a user’s data. The company’s support page has a list of steps family members or an authorized person must take, including the deceased’s username, a copy of a death certificate, a copy of a government issued ID and a signed statement with more contact information, action you are requesting to be taken (such as the deactivation of the account) and other evidence that you and the deceased are who you are claiming you are.

Twitter also requires all of this information be sent to the company by mail rather than electronically.

Overall, the Legacy Contact feature appears to have good intentions, despite the fact that it’s gotten some negative press lately after a terrorist in Copenhagen had his profile made into a memorial page just days before he carried out an attack.

Although it may seem like a lot of work on top of planning for your death in real life, it may be worthwhile if you or your family members don’t want all your tweets from 2010 floating around the Twittersphere forever.

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