Facebook wants to help you prepare for your own death

Not many people think about what happens to their online accounts when they die and even the ones that do never really do anything about it. However, this can be a serious issue for the people that you’ll be leaving behind, particularly with social media profiles like Facebook, which is why Facebook is adding a new feature to the social network that allows you to pick a “legacy contact” that will be given access to your account when you die. 

With so much of our lives spent online, you wouldn’t be overly cautious to start planning exactly what will happen to your internet life once you die. All those financial accounts, social networks, and email — like most things in life, they don’t automatically go with you in the event your life is tragically cut short. A few months back, we told you guys exactly what you can do with your Google and/or Gmail account should you pass away or disappear, thanks to Google’s Inactive Account Manager. In that very same post, someone asked if Facebook had a similar feature and at the time, they didn’t. The closest thing Facebook offered was memorializing an account after death, locking out everyone and anyone from logging in. But starting today, Facebook announced a new feature heading to the social network allowing users to pick a special loved one or relative, dubbed a “legacy contact,” to manage their account should they die.