Facebook Heir? Time to Choose Who Manages Your Account When You Die
The social network now lets you designate a ‘legacy contact’ for your digital afterlife
Facebook users can now name a "legacy contact" who can look after some aspects of their social network account after they die. PHOTO: FACEBOOK
17 COMMENTS
You can finally decide what happens to your Facebook account when you die.
In a change of heart, the world’s most popular social network will begin allowing its members to designate someone—what they call a “legacy contact”—to manage parts of their accounts posthumously. Members can also choose to have their presence deleted entirely.
Facebook and other Internet services walk a difficult tightrope between respecting the privacy of the deceased and the demands of grieving friends and family. Previously, Facebook automatically froze the accounts of members it learned had died, angering some heirs who wanted to edit the deceased’s online presence. It will roll out the new options to members in the U.S. on Thursday, with others to follow later.
Asking us to make plans for a digital afterlife may sound morbid, but it can bring clarity to an issue that’s both legally and emotionallychallenging. In 2013, Google became the first major Internet company to allow users to select digital heirs for its Gmail, cloud storage and other services, dubbed “inactive account managers.”
What’s the point of maintaining a social network after death? Facebook legacy contacts will be able to manage accounts in a way that can turn the deceased person’s Facebook page into a kind of digital gravestone. Legacy contacts can write a post to display at the top of their friend’s memorialized profile page, change the friend’s profile picture, and even respond to new friend requests on behalf of the deceased.
Advertisement
If they’re granted prior permission, legacy contacts can also download an archive of posts and photos from the deceased, but not the contents of his or her private messages.
All of this is optional. If you do nothing, when Facebook finds out you’ve passed, it will simply freeze your account and leave posts and pictures at the privacy settings you determined, a process it calls memorialization. Facebook says it has done this to hundreds of thousands of accounts to date. (As before, Facebook won’t show advertisements on memorialized accounts.)
Being a legacy contact is different from simply logging into the account of the deceased, and there are important things legacy contacts can’t alter. They can’t edit what the deceased has already posted, or what his or her friends post on the page. If you chose to post a photo while you are living that looks embarrassing when you are gone, your legacy contact can’t do anything about it. A legacy contact also can’t decide to delete a whole account.
Both the Facebook website and app have this Legacy Contact setting under the Security option. PHOTO: FACEBOOK
These restrictions might upset some people who think their job as a caretaker is to maintain a Facebook page as thenicest possible memorial. “We gave this a lot of thought, and ultimately decided against it for this first version,” said spokeswoman Jodi Seth. Facebook feared that curation responsibilities might add an extra emotional load to grieving, among other concerns.
To select your legacy contact, go to Settings and choose Security and then Legacy Contact at the bottom of the page—it’s the same for the Facebook website or mobile app. There you can designate an existing Facebook friend (in other words, only someone who’s already part of the social network), grant that person permission to download an archive of your data, or choose to have your account deleted after death.
There’s more fine print worth paying attention to: You can only select one person—and no backup—so spouses and partners who often travel together may face a difficult choice about whether to designate each other. Ms. Seth says Facebook is continuing to think about how it might allow for contingent legacy contacts.
Facebook members can change their legacy contact selection at any time, but once they’ve died, a legacy contact can’t pass along the responsibility to someone else.
If you don’t choose a legacy contact on Facebook but name a digital heir in a legal will, Facebook will designate that person.
It’s exhausting to think that Facebook has become so interwoven into our lives that we not only have to think about setting our birthdays, relationships and jobs in stone there, but now also our deaths. Still, Facebook’s new service empowers people to make choices about their data while they’re living, and for many, that’s a relief.
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com or on Twitter at @geoffreyfowler
When You Die, Who Can Read Your Email?
A Controversial New Delaware Law Gives Executors More Access to Online Data
ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD MIA
A controversial new state law is making it easier for estate executors to access digital data—such as email, photos and social-media postings—after the account holder dies.
Many Internet companies strictly limit access to their customers’ accounts to the account holder, in accordance, they say, with federal privacy law. When an account holder dies, estate executors typically have to seek a court order to access the account, which can be expensive and time consuming—sometimes taking half a year or more—and isn’t always successful.
But under a Delaware law passed last summer, executors can now access online accounts without a court order, unless the deceased has instructed otherwise. Similar legislation is under consideration in several other states.
JOURNAL REPORT
- Insights from The Experts
- Read more at WSJ.com/WealthReport
MORE IN WEALTH MANAGEMENT
That’s an encouraging development to people like Andy Blair, an estate lawyer in Raleigh, N.C., who says his parents have thousands of family photos stored online. “Without a law like this,” he says, “I may never get access to those” after his parents die. But a group of Internet firms opposed the Delaware law, saying that it violates consumer privacy and may conflict with existing federal privacy law.
Beyond Delaware
The new Delaware law also gives access to those serving as agents for the deceased under a power of attorney, as well as court-appointed guardians for those who are incapacitated, and to others serving in a fiduciary role.
The law could affect people beyond Delaware’s borders. Although its population is small, Delaware’s generous trust and tax laws make it a popular place for people across the country to locate trusts, particularly among wealthy families. Individuals can have a Delaware trust even if they live in a different state, as long as a trustee is located in the state. And under the new law, that trustee could access the digital data of the person’s assets that are placed in the Delaware trust.
Delaware’s law, called the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets and Digital Accounts Act, is modeled after an act drafted by the Uniform Law Commission, a group appointed by state governments that writes up and lobbies for new state laws. So far this year, at least 13 states, including Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota and Washington, are considering versions of this digital data act. As legislative sessions get into gear this year, state-government watchers anticipate that other states will consider or pass new rules granting digital access to agents for the deceased.
Privacy Concerns
The law is designed to give legally appointed fiduciaries the same access to digital assets as they would have for more tangible assets, such as files stored in cabinets or photos stored in shoeboxes, but not without some restraints. The law requires the fiduciary to follow the deceased or incapacitated person’s instructions for how accounts should be handled—which may include denying the fiduciary access to some or even all accounts. If there are no written instructions, the fiduciary can act as he or she sees fit, according to applicable laws.
A coalition of Internet firms unsuccessfully lobbied Delaware Gov. Jack Markell to veto the legislation. Jim Halpert, general counsel of this State Privacy and Security Coalition, says that, among other concerns, a digital-account holder may not want the content of communication with a doctor, counselor or patients disclosed.
The informal nature and sheer volume of most digital correspondence makes it significantly different from old-fashioned letters, Mr. Halpert says. “Email is a much more unfiltered form of communication,” he says. “People may not show the side of themselves that they want and other family members may be hurt by those communications.”
Taking Precautions
Mr. Blair recommends that account holders guard against such problems by spelling out in estate-planning documents how they want all their digital data treated, limiting access to sensitive accounts. He suggests doing this now, even for people outside Delaware, to ensure that those protections will be in place if the law changes where an account holder lives.
Mr. Blair cautions that while family members may share digital passwords and other login information, even a family member acting as a fiduciary should contact a lawyer before accessing any accounts, because doing so may violate state or federal law. “That’s where the minefield is right now, and that’s why this act is so important,” says Mr. Blair. “Just because you have the login and password doesn’t mean you can access it whenever you want.”
Ms. Silverman is a Wall Street Journal reporter in New York. Email:rachel.silverman@wsj.com.
