Facebook is now giving users control over what happens to their accounts when they died.
A new feature has been rolled out by the social network which allows users to nominate one friend who will be able to access their account after death.
The new feature was implemented on Thursday and is called Legacy contact which appears in Facebook's security settings menu, reports website Mashable.
There, you can select a specific Facebook friend who will be able to control certain aspects of your page, like your profile and header image, after you die. Alternatively, users can opt to have their account deleted after they pass away.
The social network already has a memorialisation system in place where people can let Facebook know a user has passed away. Once Facebook verifies that person has died — typically through an obituary or news article — the account becomes memorialised. These accounts don't surface in friend suggestions, ads or other "public" places on Facebook.
With the legacy contact feature, Facebook is taking the memorialisation process a step further. After an account becomes memorialised, a legacy contact is able to pin posts to the top of a page, respond to incoming friend requests and control the profile and header image on an account. Additionally, they can download an archive of the user's photos and other posts, if given permission by the original account holder. Legacy contacts can't view messages or change other account settings.
Facebook is also making changes to the appearance of these memorialized accounts, which will now have a "remembering" label before the name to let others know it's an account of someone who has since passed away.
