Facebook Legacy Contact / Memorializing an Account

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:

1. If you had the password, access the account and immediately download all content.
2. Memorialize an account. Which is frequently done by anyone on the friend's list of the deceased without our knowledge or consent.
3. 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

Learn more about memorialization and how to add a legacy contact to your account.

If you're a legacy contact, learn how to manage a memorialized profile.

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.

One Fewer Steve DeRose on Facebook

(Written by Steve on Facebook three and a half years ago.)

All the Steve DeRoses on Facebook - September 8, 2009

If you search for Steve DeRose on Facebook, there are 17 of us and clearly I am the most handsome although the one in Cincinnati is cute enough to be gay. There’s a Steve DeRose leaning against a wooden fence with his significant other that seems nice, but his friends look a little creepy. I swear I saw one of them on last night’s episode of “Gangland”.

Steve DeRose from Washington DC is on Facebook, and if you Bing or Google Steve DeRose he comes up. He’s one of the inventors of xml and he’s a brilliant computer guy. Like me. I’ve often wondered if any old friends ever look for me and find him. I wonder if they think “Jeeeeesus, Steve lost a ton of weight”. He also has the derose.net domain, but I have stevederose.com. One of these days I’m going to do something with that darn domain.

There’s a Steven DeRose in Ft. Wayne, IN where my wife’s grandfather lives. If I ever meet my grandfatherinlaw I wonder if that will freak him out. I’d say “Hi Grandpa Kendall, I’m Steve DeRose” and he’d say “No you’re not!”. Then I’d show him my driver’s license and he’d go “Jeeeeesus, you’ve put on a ton of weight”. Hmm, better not go to Ft. Wayne.

Steve DeRoses are global: There’s one in London and one in France, and there’s one in Ontario and one studying at ITI Guglielmo Marconi in Italy. And then there’s one Steve DeRose whose facebook picture is his eyeball. Steve DeRoses are a creative artistic lot.

Stephen DeRose from Medford Oregon spells his name exactly like I do: StePHen. However I’m certain we have nothing in common. He looks a little like a meth dealer and I look like… what exactly the hell do I look like? Many years ago my best friend in High School said I looked like a smiling tomato so I’ll go with that. Except now I look like a smiling tomato with a goatee and a balding head. Come to think of it, I did look like a smiling tomato, as opposed to my best friend in High School who looked like the Puerto Rican version of Mark Spitz, only chubbier.

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I did something last month I never thought I'd do when Steve died. I had his Facebook account deleted.

I had been contemplating it for over a year. After the first year mark passed, I was the only person posting on his wall. I was the only person still tagging him in pictures. It was like I was the only person still remembering him.

I know that isn't true. I know many people still thought about him. Maybe even often. But they weren't sharing it with me. And after a year where his name wasn't mentioned during holiday phone calls (which rarely even took place on the holiday), where no one called me on the day of our wedding anniversary, his birthday, or the one year marking of his death, I was tired of walking around thinking about him alone. I wanted people to call me on those landmark days. I needed them to say his name and share some memories with me. Hopefully ones I had never heard before. I was tired of feeling like I was alone in grieving his absence. Alone in being his memory-keeper.

So, it was a year after Steve died when I first started thinking about deleting his Facebook page.

I didn't want to be hasty, though. I didn't want to make an irreversible decision as a knee-jerk emotional reaction. I started talking to friends and asking for their thoughts. I received a range of comments from "People grieve differently" to "They just don't know what to say to you" to "You're too sensitive."

I understood all of it. People DO grieve differently. I've learned that just by talking to other widows. People DON'T know what to say to me. The smart ones fessed up they don't know what to say but most people walked away thinking I have plenty of other support, not realizing that everyone else around me was thinking and doing the exact same as them. And, yes, I WAS too sensitive. I felt as though my skin had been flayed off and every passing breeze was torture. It didn't help that my father died just after the one year anniversary of Steve's death, throwing me back into the depths of depression.

But there was one thing no one had the courage to say to me. The one thing I secretly knew anyway. That mostly, people had moved on and weren't thinking of Steve very often. It was right, and normal, and the way life progresses. Doesn't mean it wasn't difficult to know that while everyone else could go about their lives, I was still struggling to get through each day without the man I married next to me.

I kept his Facebook page up for another year and a half. I checked his page every day, posted on his page occasionally, tagged him in pictures regularly. Because, though it pained me to see no one else doing those things, I still needed to do them.

Something changed for me this past year as the holidays approached. I started getting angry. Not at Steve. At the people in my life. At the people in Steve's life. At all the people who had been uncomfortable in my presence because they didn't know what to say. At the people who thought I was an interesting freak show to watch up close and personal. At the people who saw my weakness and tried to take advantage of me. At myself. Myself, for bending over backwards trying to help them feel comfortable when it should have been the other way around. Myself, for not having the strength to tell the freak show watchers and advantage takers takers to fuck off; instead just walking away from them and hoping they'd disappear. Myself, for wanting to stretch out my time with a dead man by hearing about him from the mouths of others.

That's when I stopped, took stock, and realized: I'm not alone. Steve is imbedded in my very being. I can quit hoping people will share memories of Steve with me, cause I have my own to keep me company. And I will share those memories freely cause I no longer care if people are uncomfortable. And I will tell indiscreet people to fuck off cause my strength has returned to me. I can let go of checking Steve's Facebook page every day cause I carry him with me everywhere I go.

And that's the day I decided to delete his Facebook page. But not before checking, one last time, that I had downloaded his page in it's entirety. I'm angry, not stupid.

(P.S. For those looking for information about memorializing a Facebook account, I wrote a post about it here: Memorializing a Facebook Account.)

Memorializing a Facebook Account

I was asked by a fellow widow to explain the process of memorializing a spouse's Facebook account. In all fairness, these things change as Facebook does site upgrades. There are things I've heard about from widow/ers before me, as well. But first, here's what Facebook has to say:

What does memorializing an account mean? Does it deactivate or delete it?

When a user passes away, we memorialize their account to protect their privacy. Memorializing an account sets the account privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. The Wall remains, so friends and family can leave posts in remembrance. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into the account.

How do I report a deceased user or an account that needs to be memorialized or deleted?

          Memorializing the account:

Please report this information here, so we can memorialize this person’s account. Memorializing the account restricts profile access to confirmed friends only. Please note that in order to protect the privacy of the deceased user, we cannot provide login information for the account to anyone.

Removing the account:

Verified immediate family members may request the removal of a loved one’s account. This will completely remove the account from Facebook, so no one can view it. We will not restore the account or provide information on its content unless required by law. If you are requesting a removal and are not an immediate family member of the deceased, your request will not be processed. In this case, the account will be memorialized.

If you are an immediate family member and would like to request that we remove your loved one's account from the site, click here. You may also use this form if you have a special request regarding a deceased user's account.

A few point to understand about those two answers in plain-speak:

1. If you have the password and are currently able to sign in to your spouses account, once you request memorization, you will no longer be able to sign in to your spouse's account.
2. You will no longer be able to accept new friend requests on your spouse's behalf.
3. You will no longer be able to delete friends on your spouse's account.
4. Your spouse's name will no longer show up in any Facebook search except to the people on his or her current friends list.
5. Once you have memorialized an account, it WILL NOT be undone.
6. You can choose to delete the account instead of memorializing it, or even after memorializing it. Once the account has been deleted, they WILL NOT RESTORE IT.

The question then becomes - Why memorialize it at all?

That is a personal decision. I decided to do it after a year because I was tired of Facebook notifications showing up in my husband's e-mail account. (I've been trying to get to a point to shut down his e-mail account.) My thoughts were that a year after his death, if people were still looking to friend him on Facebook, it was no longer someone I was interested in having the "oh, I'm so sorry and how did he die" conversations. After a year, they weren't part of his life and I, frankly, no longer wanted to deal with people popping out of the woodwork.

By memorializing his page, all of his friends and myself could still post on his wall, still tag him in newly uploaded pictures *, but I wouldn't have to deal with any "newbies" searching for him.

Disclaimer time: I have heard horror stories from widow/ers who had some glitches when their spouses account was changed over to a memorial page. They lost wall postings made by their spouse, etc. I memorialized Steve's Facebook page a week ago and haven't found anything missing. Those old horror stories may have been sorted out since the messages I read. But there is a way to make sure you don't lose anything from your spouse's account. You can download everything (pictures, wall posts, videos, etc)  from that account. (This is supposing you have the ability to log in as your spouse.) I highly suggest you do this before memorializing the account.

To Download Your Information (everything the account has done/written/uploaded):

1. Log in as your spouse. 
2. Go to the "Account" tab. 
3. Go to the "Settings" tab.
4. Click on "Learn More" next to the "Download Your Information" option.
5. They will walk you through it. You'll need to be able to access your spouse's e-mail account to verify the account download. You may not receive this e-mail for several hours.
6. Once you get receive the e-mail, you may download everything that account has posted, including pictures, videos, wall posts and messages.
7. I suggest you do the same thing for YOUR account to be certain you don't lose anything your spouse may have written on your wall.
8. Once both accounts have been downloaded, feel free to memorialize the account.

I will say one of my biggest fears is that once my husband's account had been memorialized, that both of our accounts would no longer show us as married to each other. Turns out I had nothing to fear. I still show up as his spouse on his page and he still shows up as my spouse on my page. Eventually I may change my status to widowed, but that will happen in my own time when I am ready for it. Of course, once that change has been made, it can not be reverted.

* As of 8/11/12, Facebook allows us to photo tag the person of a memorialized account. That wasn't true for about a year but was true before that year. These things change constantly. Just know that it may change yet again.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to leave a comment on this post or you may reach me at kikimarcus (at) gmail (dot) com.

Read about  Deciding to Delete A Facebook Account.
Read about Creating a Facebook Legacy Contact.