What Will Happen to Your Facebook or Google Account After You Pass Away?
It is important to consider if you want to be on Facebook after you are gone.
Presently, there are thousands of people who are deceased and still have a Facebook account. To address this Facebook has created a “Legacy Contact”. A Legacy Contact has the power to remove your account from Facebook.
If you prefer to keep your account active as a “memorialized account” a Legacy Contact has the ability to update your profile picture, accept friend requests or write a post. Your Legacy Contact cannot remove posts from your timeline, read your messages, remove your friends or change the Legacy Contact.
People often have very valuable, but also private information within their Google Accounts.
As a result, it is a good idea to consider what should happen to this information after your death. Google permits you to make a plan on what to do with your account when you pass away. Here’s how it works. Google will flag your account as “inactive” if you haven’t used it for a period of time, which you can select the duration (anywhere from 3 months to a year).
After that period of inactivity has passed Gmail will contact you at your phone number, email and recovery email. If you don’t respond then people you have listed as your “Inactive Account Managers” will be notified. You can list up to ten people in this role.
You can specify what information will be shared with each person. For example, you can decide to give your wife access to your email and Google Drive. You may only give your son access to your Google Drive because that is where your photos are stored. Finally, you can specify if your Google Account should be automatically deleted after the Inactive Account Managers are notified.
