I have received many heartbreaking e-mails and comments on posts from those of us left behind. The hardest ones for me are the ones in regard to a post I made about
Memorializing a Facebook account.
Here's part of an email I received from a mother who's daughter died at 19, and the mother hadn't been "friended" by her daughter before her death. Once her daughter's FB page had been memorialized, the mother was locked out:
One message I
would love to get out there to other parents is get involved and become
friended, if possible, on your children's face book page for this very
reason or if its an older teen and they do not want Mommy and Daddy
seeing every comment from them and their friends maybe if there was a
way to petition to Facebook to allow an option to check if death occurs
you grant the permission for your parents or next of kin to have access
to their memorialized page so their digital memory can live on with the
ones that loved them the most, not just 1000+ acquaintances that hardly
even knew her. The latter message is what I really would love to see
facebook consider. But since they do not even care enough to reply or
provide a number to call with a concern or comment I don't see that even
possible to get started either.
Then there was this comment left on my original post:
My wife passed away last year, i memorialized her page NOT realizing
that i wasn't a "friend" (didn't do Facebook) i am locked out of her
page to read any comments or postings of hr friends or post my own
comments on her page. do i have any recourse? when you lose a spouse you
do a LOT of things not understanding the complete ramifications.
Then there was this comment:
My daughter was killed in an autoobile accident in 2009. I wasnt a FB
user then but since the accident I do have an active account. I
discoverd this evening that my daughters facebook account is active and
has been memorialized, all the while I just though they deleted it. Is
there a way for FB to allow me to be added for access to her page?
Every time I get one of these comments or e-mails, I shudder. How many ways do we realize after the death of someone we love, we weren't connected to the technology they used?
There are other e-mails and comments. People who thought they were memorializing a page but mistakenly requested it to be deleted. Everything gone. No way to get Facebook to relist the page. How often, in the pain, the shock, the fogged-in moments, did we hit the wrong button, make the wrong choice?
I've heard of people trying to go to court to get access to the information. Been interviewed as journalists try and figure out who owns the content. Facebook? The deceased? The executive of the estate? And while the laws are trying to catch up to our social media world, it's the bereaved who are left frantically scrambling for any way to reattach to those we've lost.
Mostly what I did and what I've suggested for those trying to navigate the technology, is frowned upon. Frowned upon by Facebook. Frowned upon by lawyers. They don't want us manipulating an account not in our name. I don't care. I'm about results.
After writing my post about how to memorialize an account, I wrote a follow up about
when I decided to delete his Facebook account. I don't regret that decision... most of the time. But back then there were only three options:
- If you had the password, access the account and immediately download all content.
- Memorialize an account. Which is frequently done by anyone on the friend's list of the deceased without our knowledge or consent.
- Delete the account.
Those options sucked. But they were the best we had.
As always, technology changes, morphs, and hopefully becomes more useful. Facebook now has a new option. They now have a Legacy Contact. Each Facebook user can now designate a person to be charge of their account should they die. This is what Facebook has to say about it:
What is a legacy contact?
A legacy contact is someone you choose to look after your account if it's
memorialized. Once your account is memorialized, your legacy contact will have the option to do things like:
Write
a pinned post for your profile (ex: to share a final message on your
behalf or provide information about a memorial service)
Respond to new friend requests (ex: old friends or family members who weren't yet on Facebook)
Update your profile picture and cover photo
You also have the option to allow your legacy contact to
download a copy of what you've shared on Facebook, and we may add additional capabilities for legacy contacts in the future.
Your legacy contact can't:
Log into your account
Remove or change past posts, photos and other things shared on your Timeline
Read messages you've sent to other friends
Remove any of your friends
Note: You must be 18 or older to select a legacy contact.
To set someone up as your Legacy Contact:
- Go into settings (usually an icon of a lock in the upper right hand corner on all pages within Facebook).
- Click on "See More Settings"
- On the left hand side is a badge icon with "Security"
- Legacy Contact should be a the bottom of the page.
I suggest that everyone who has a Facebook account, go in and set someone to be there Legacy Contact. I was not able to do this via my smartphone but had to log onto a computer to do it. Take the time. Do this. Ask all the people you know and love to do this. For those of us left behind, it will make just one thing easier.
And we will take all the easier we can get at a time like this.
