What is a Facebook Legacy Contact and Have You Set Yours Up Yet?

Ahhh mortality. It's not an easy subject to think about but you know how the old saying goes: There's only two things you can count on these days - death and taxes. And oh yeah, if you are a politician with the right connections, you don't even have to pay taxes! But, not even the rich and powerful can escape the big sleep.

But, you can do some things to prepare. The easiest of all is to set a legacy contact on Facebook. I know, what a time to be alive! Planning your Facebook memorialization is critical in this fast-paced world. Personal brand awareness and all that sort of jazz.

All jokes aside, you do want to pick someone who will responsibly take care of your social media legacy after you are gone and not judge you for those pics you posted in college. I've had friends to pass and someone took over their Facebook account answering mourners as them. It's kind of weird... We'll leave it at that.

According to Facebook:

A legacy contact is someone you choose to look after your account if it's memorialized. Once your account is memorialized, your legacy contact will have the option to do things like:

• Write a pinned post for your profile (example: to share a final message on your behalf or provide information about a memorial service).
• View posts, even if you had set your privacy to Only Me.
• Decide who can see and who can post tributes, if the memorialized account has an area for tributes.
• Delete tribute posts.
• Change who can see posts that you're tagged in.
• Remove tags of you that someone else has posted.
• Respond to new friend requests (example: old friends or family members who weren't yet on Facebook).
• Update your profile picture and cover photo.
• If you had turned on timeline review, your legacy contact will be able to turn off the requirement to review posts and tags before they appear in the tributes section.
• Request the removal of your account.

• Log into your account.
• Read your messages.
• Remove any of your friends or make new friend requests.