Facebook Brings New Meaning To The Term ‘Best Friend’ By Letting You Choose A Digital Heir

Jonathan Hordle / REX Shutterstock

What happens to your Facebook profile when you die? Now you can nominate a friend or family member to take over your account.

The legacy contact scheme was launched in the US in February 2015 and has now been introduced in the UK.

Until now, Facebook profiles could only be ‘memorialised’ when someone dies - which meant they became inactive pages, archived for the memories. But the new scheme means that you can set one contact to take control of your profile when you shuffle off this mortal coil, allowing them to post a final status update, accept friend requests and update your profile picture.

Although some people are worried that this may confuse people into thinking you’re still around, Facebook says it’s simply responding to thousands of requests for a feature like this from its 1.4 billion users.

It also allows your survivors to download an archive of photos, status updates and profile information you shared on Facebook while alive.

“The legacy contact is chosen by the account holder, so it’s somebody that they trust and who knows them really well, so they’ll be able to decide who to add and whether to change the profile picture or pin a post,” Facebook’s Vanessa Callison-Burch said.

To set up your legacy contact, go to Facebook settings, then ‘security’ and choose ‘legacy contact’ at the bottom of the page. If you’d rather, you can opt for Facebook to permanently delete your profile when you die.

So when you’re busy portioning out your money, your MP3 collection and your best hat in your will, remember to choose someone to bequeath your social media to as well.

Just make sure they know which was your best side.