Dealing with Social Media Accounts After a Death

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Admin under Funeral Home
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funeral homes in Little Elm, TX

You know that you have to take care of a lot of things when someone you love passes away and has a service at a funeral home in Little Elm, TX.

But have you thought about what happens to the deceased’s unread emails sitting in their Gmail? What about their Twitter account?

You can’t just leave a deceased’s social media or otherwise online life behind. Our digital footprints will only get bigger the longer our society spends online. If you want to make things easier on your family and loved ones when you’re gone, start making a list of all your accounts, usernames, and passwords now so they have easy access to your information.

There are certain steps you must take to close down accounts and otherwise manage their digital legacy. Use these tips to take care of common online accounts after a death:

  • Twitter – Twitter will work with a verified immediate family member or an executor of an estate to deactivate a deceased’s account. You must submit a request for a deactivation and removal online, upon which you will be sent an email with instructions for providing proper documentation of your relationship to the deceased and the death.
  • Google – Thankfully, Google accounts are fairly easy to deal with. If the deceased had any kind or any number of Google accounts, from Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Calendar to Google Photos, Gmail or even YouTube, they had a Google ID. Google has a program called Inactive Account Manager in which someone can preset all data and accounts linked to their Google ID to be wiped after a certain period of inactivity. If the deceased used that program, your work is done. If they didn’t, simply file a request to Google, submit documents proving your relationship to the deceased, and the company will close down the Google ID.funeral home in Little Elm, TX
  • Facebook – Facebook has set up two different methods to handle a deceased’s account: Deletion and Memorialization. If you wish to delete their Facebook page, you have to submit a request to Facebook, provide documentation proving they are deceased and your relationship to them, and wait the 90-day period. Facebook also offers a Memorialization option, which turns the deceased’s page into an online memorial that keeps the original content and allows others to post memories, comments and photos.
  • Instagram – Instagram is similar to Facebook in that it allows the bereaved to delete or memorialize an account. Only immediate family members can file a request to delete an Instagram account, and they are required to submit proof of relationship and proof of death, such as a death certificate. Instagram accounts can be memorialized once the company gets a valid request backed up by death documentation and proof of relationship. A memorialized Instagram account can’t be changed at all, and the posts will only be visible to the audience with which they were first shared. In other words, you can’t make a memorialized account public if it was originally private.

Do you want to learn more about dealing with death or your options for Little Elm, TX funeral homes? Slay Memorial Funeral Center is here to help, so give us a call or pay us a visit today.

Admin

The Slay family has been helping families in this area with their funeral needs since 1986. We provide a special place where loved ones can be remembered. We understand that every person is special and unique. Therefore, we feel that their life should be honored in the same way.