Facebook lets you choose what happens to your profile after you’ve died

You can’t take your Facebook friends with you to the afterlife, but at least you can now prevent your snarky comments about Drag Race serving as a poor memorial. The social network has announced that users will be able to designate a legacy contact that can maintain their accounts after they have died. According to the Wall Street Journal, a new group of options will let you pick a digital executor to run your page as a memorial, or elect to have your profile deleted once it’s proven that you’ve passed away.

Currently, if the site learns of your death, your page is frozen, and although no adverts are run, this can sometimes have unfortunate consequences. According to the paper, US users will begin to see the options appearing from today, with other nations coming on shortly afterward. Privacy-conscious users will also be reassured to learn that your nominated Facebook friend will be able to see your photos and public posts, but not your private messages. In addition, Facebook says that if a person hasn’t been nominated on the site, but was asked to do the same job in a will, then the site will respect the deceased’s wishes.

[Image Credit: Ambientideas/Getty]

Filed under: Internet, Facebook

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Source: Wall Street Journal