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In this new world of social media, plenty of your accounts are going to soldier on after you die. Get ready. But in the meantime, it’s easy—too easy—to convince Facebook just about anyone is dead, at which point the site will lock down the account as a memorial until the supposed corpse argues otherwise.
The vulnerability was discovered by one Rusty Foster, who was unfairly Facebook-killed, after which Buzzfeed tested out the process on one of its own. It’s as easy as can be.
In order to submit a “memorialisation request” all you have to do is fill out a short form including the target’s name, one of the emails associated with the target’s account, your relationship to the target (which you can just lie about) and “proof of death.” As for proof, Facebook will accept something as flimsy as an online obituary of the same name, even if it’s for a person of a different age in a different state, who even spells his name differently.
Once your account is memorialised, there’s not much you can do other than filling out a form that basically says “Hey, I’m alive,” and waiting. In Rusty’s case, the issue took days to resolve. Memorialisation doesn’t delete or destroy anything, but it’s definitely a hassle for anyone who isn’t dead, and it’s ridiculously easy to fake. Hopefully Facebook will button this up soon, or the ensuing memorialisation prank wars could start racking up casualties. You can read more about the process at Buzzfeed. Here’s to hoping you have a unique name. [Buzzfeed]
Image by Edward Fielding/Shutterstock
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My Uncle recently passed away, and he was getting spam on his wall. It was quite strange for me, upsetting for his widow, to see posts on his wall still arriving. So, we tried to memorialize his account legitimately, and it’s irritatingly hard to do it legitimately. They wouldn’t accept a scanned copy of Death Certificate, and no obituary has been published for him on the internet. Any advice?
When my dad passed, the only ‘proof’ was an invite written by me with a crematorium link on his page notifying everyone, and two people had written ‘RIP’. I didn’t even have an e-mail to give.
I did actually send a second request about two days later but only because I couldn’t tell if the page had changed (which it actually had). Never received a single correspondence from FB!
See if people would like to leave a message on his wall?
People have left messages on his wall – the day he died, but it’s not enough. It’s a really bad system. I guess it’s just going to stay up.
if you don’t know the password but do have enough personal details then you could ‘hack’ the account and close it manually
We want it open, but in ‘memorial’ mode, so that people can view it, but not post or comment on it.
you can login and lock the wall then.
privacy settings >
‘timeline settings’ on the left>
Who can post on your timeline? >
set it to ‘no one’
also delete all apps from the account so they don’t create posts on your uncle’s behalf.
I’m well aware how to do that, but we don’t know his passwords.