What happens to your Facebook account when you die?

The other day I found myself thinking about how much we have come to rely on social media to preserve our memories. We post cell phone pictures of our trip to the beach or photos of our first baby or first home. Our lives are so integrated with our online accounts, whether it’s email, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter. What I’ve been pondering is what happens to this minefield of information and memories should we or someone close to us pass away? Does it simply disappear, never to be seen again?

As with almost everything else, the US has come up with a solution. A group of American lawyers are proposing a plan to automatically give loved ones access to a deceased person’s digital accounts, unless of course he or she specified otherwise in their will. This will become an important part of estate planning as you can decide which accounts should die when you do (maybe that long forgotten MySpace account with all your embarrassing photos you want nobody to see).

Put yourself in the shoes of a person who just lost someone close to them; think of the amount of memories being lost, memories of that person and who they were – all their ramblings, musings and photos…GONE. That person’s online presence carries as much sentimental value as any tangible asset.

What I found out was that you cannot share your passwords with a loved one in your will and give them permission to access your accounts when you’re gone. The reason for this is that your passwords can get leaked when a will becomes public record and some companies’ terms of use agreements prohibit you from accessing accounts that do not belong to you – logging into a dead person’s account can make you a criminal.

Here are few companies with their own policies on what should happen after your death:

• Facebook will "memorialise" you accounts by allowing confirmed friends to continue to view your photos and old posts. 

• Google states that if a person doesn't log into their accounts after a while, their accounts can be deleted or shared with a designated person. 

• When signing up, Yahoo users agree that their account expires when they die.

Is social media important enough to count as part of your estate?

Written by: Christine Kleyn

Copywriter at The Computer Guyz Cape Town and Centurion