What Happens to Your Email, Social Media Accounts When You Die?

Ever wondered what happens to your online accounts when you die? Over the last few years, Facebook’s been the bearer of the bad news of the death of a few friends of mine. It is always a moment of shock when the time between the news friend’s passing on and the last status update is just a few hours.

For accounts like mine with a lot of content shared per day, I always ask myself: what will happen when I go?

In 2009, Facebook’s head of security, announced the company’s policy of “memorializing” profiles of users who have died, taking them out of the public search results, sealing them from any future log-in attempts and leaving the wall open for family and friends to pay their respects.

At that time, Facebook had just upgraded the design of the homepage, including a section for “Suggestions” of people to reconnect with – a move that sparked of immense user backlash across the web.

“We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it’s important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized,” Max Kelly said in a blog post.
Suggestions that appear on the right-hand side of the home page and remind people to take actions with friends who need help on Facebook. By memorializing the account of someone who has passed away, people will no longer see that person appear in their Suggestions.”

The following form is available for requesting for a deceased person's account to be memorialized

Memorializing accounts is more of a report-with-proof kind of thing. In a move to discourage pranksters, Facebook does require proof before sending a profile down the digital river. Family or friends must fill out a form (pictured above), providing a link to an obituary or other information confirming a user’s death, before the profile is officially memorialized. Once that is completed, the user will cease showing up in Facebook’s suggestions, and information like status updates won’t show up in Facebook’s news feed, the stream of real-time user updates that is the site’s centerpiece. If relatives prefer not to have the profile stand as an online memorial, Facebook says it will remove the account altogether.

Twitter

Like Facebook, Twitter will not allow relatives to access the account of the deceased.

“In the event of the death of a Twitter user, we can work with a person authorized to act on the behalf of the estate or with a verified immediate family member of the deceased to have an account deactivated,” says the company on this Help Center page.

Google

If a loved ones, Google won’t just hand over control of their Google account to a grieving next of kin. The company insists that it be presented with “half a dozen” documents including the death certificate and certificate confirming power of attorney over the account. It will take around a month to deal with the documents before it hands over control.

Similarly, Yahoo! says while it will shut down the deceased’s account if requested by surviving family members, it will not grant access to email. Of course, Yahoo! won’t block relatives from accessing the account if they were given the password before the deceased’s death.

“Internet users who want to be sure their email and other online accounts are accessible to their legal heirs may want to work with their attorneys to plan an offline process for such access as part of their estate planning process,” says Yahoo! 

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