Facebook:
If you choose not to delete your account, you have the choice to delegate your account to a family member.
Facebook’s policy allows family members to be delegated to handle their relatives’ profile accounts but with proof of death first by a link to an obituary or news report confirming death. Facebook’s staff will then make sure the profile is inactive before converting it to another individual. They could either close the account or turn into a memorial profile. Facebook’s policy states the company will never release login information to anyone other than the account holder, even after death. The legacy contact, however, cannot do anything on the account such as read private messages.
Twitter:
Twitter has a different policy than Facebook. Once notified of one’s proof of death, Twitter will allow your account to be deleted by an immediate family member.
In some cases, it takes in consideration media removal requests. Its policy states that Twitter “considers public interest factors such as the newsworthiness of the content and may not be able to honor every request.”
Google:
Google has the option to delete the account. However it also has an inactive account manager feature where one can delegate their account to up to 10 people. Those in the list will be notified when Google notices one’s account to be inactive for a certain amount of time according to the feature set up by the user. Unlike in Facebook, the person delegated will have full access to the deceased person’s account and be able to see chat history and messages – if the deceased person did not specify otherwise.
Social media apps without death planning:
LinkedIn, Snapchat, Yahoo, AOL and Tumblr are among many social media sites that only allow the profile owner to delete their account. There is no legacy manager or data access by anyone. Some did announce plans to consider introducing added features, such as LinkedIn, in the future however.
