In one of the pictures in my idea folder, nine app logos cover the front of an apartment building like windows: Facebook, Threads, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, X, WhatsApp, YouTube and Telegram. Count your own. Behind each logo is an account that will still exist when you don't, and each company has its own rule for what happens then.
The day someone tells Instagram
Does my profile disappear when I'm gone?
No. Instagram and Facebook change nothing until someone reports the death. Then they turn your profile into a memorial. Nobody can log in to it anymore, the word Remembering appears with your name, and your photos and videos stay visible to the people you shared them with.
Who can report it, and what does it take?
Anyone who knew you can ask Instagram to make your profile a memorial, with proof such as a link to an obituary. Only close family can ask to have it removed. For that, Instagram wants documents such as your birth certificate, your death certificate, or papers showing that they legally act for you or your estate.
Who visits a profile like that?
In 2019 Sheryl Sandberg, then the executive who ran Facebook's day-to-day business, wrote that more than 30 million people view memorial profiles every month. They post stories there, mark important dates and remember the person who died.
A mother, locked out
In 2012 a fifteen-year-old girl in Berlin died after she was hit by a subway train. How it happened was still unclear years later. Her parents hoped to learn from her messages on Facebook what had been going on in her life shortly before she died.
Her mother tried to log in to her daughter's account. It didn't work. Facebook had already made the account a memorial, and from that point on, nobody could get in, not even with the right login details.
What did the court decide?
The mother took Facebook to court. A court in Berlin sided with her in 2015, and a higher court in Berlin reversed that. In July 2018 the Federal Court of Justice, Germany's highest court for cases like this, ruled for her. An account passes to the heirs, the judges wrote, just as diaries and personal letters do.
Was that the end of it?
No. Facebook then sent her a flash drive holding a single PDF file of more than 14,000 pages, a copy of the data from the account. In 2020 the same court ruled that this was not enough. She had to be able to look through the account the way her daughter once could. Her daughter had died in 2012.
Fourteen thousand pages, and still not the account she had asked for.
Three steps, in this order
Most American states have settled who may access a dead person's accounts, and they did it with the same law. It was written in 2015 by the Uniform Law Commission, a body of American lawyers, judges and law professors that drafts model laws for the states to adopt.
Does my will cover my social media accounts?
In most American states, only where you haven't set anything up in the app itself. Under the model law they adopted, what you chose in a company's own settings comes first and outranks what your will says about that account. Your will comes second. If you did neither, the company's user agreement decides, the terms you accepted on the day you signed up.
There is one condition. The setting counts only if you can change it at any time, as you can with a legacy contact, the person you can name on Facebook or Instagram to look after your profile.
Can my family read my messages after I'm gone?
Under the American model law, not by default. The person who settles your affairs after you die can ask for a list of the people you exchanged messages with, their addresses, and the date and time of each message. What you actually wrote stays off-limits, unless you agreed to share it or a court orders it.
Two countries, two answers.
In Germany a mother inherited her daughter's messages the way you inherit letters. Under the American model, whoever settles your affairs gets the envelopes, and the letters stay sealed unless you said otherwise.
One name, four places
How do I decide what happens to my accounts?
Pick one person and put their name in the settings yourself, before anyone else has to decide for you. On Facebook and Instagram the setting is called legacy contact. At Google it is Inactive Account Manager. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Sign-In & Security, then Legacy Contact.
That is the whole exercise: one person, four settings. Then write that person a few lines about which accounts you have, what can stay online and what can go.
What can the person I choose actually do?
On Facebook, your legacy contact can write a pinned post at the top of your profile, change your profile picture and cover photo, and ask for the account to be removed. On Instagram, they can change your profile picture and manage the photos you are tagged in. On neither platform can they log in or read your messages.
Can anyone get my photos and messages?
Through Apple, yes. Apple's Legacy Contact can request access to your photos, messages, notes and files, with your death certificate and the access key, a code you create when you add them. Purchased music, movies and books, and saved passwords, stay out of reach. Facebook and Instagram only offer a download of what you shared, if you allowed it.
What if I don't set anything up with Google?
Then Google may delete a personal account after two years of inactivity, including Gmail, Drive and Google Photos, after sending warnings to the account and to any backup email address. In Inactive Account Manager you choose how long Google waits, up to 18 months, and up to ten people who then receive the data you picked.
Where this meets the hour
In South Korea, in the last days of my career as a pilot, I took part in a seminar where people rehearse their own death. As part of it, I wrote my own farewell letter and lay in a coffin with the lid closed. You write a letter like that to people you choose yourself. An account has no address like that unless you give it one, and without one, a company decides what the people you leave behind get to see. It took me years to turn that day into an hour you spend at home, alone: the Last Hour Experience. The question from this article I would take into that hour is a short one. Whose name would you write down?
Questions people ask. One of them is me.
Can someone keep posting on my account after I die?
Not as you. Nobody can log in to a memorial profile. On Facebook, your legacy contact can write a pinned post, for example about the memorial service, and change your profile picture and cover photo. On Instagram, a legacy contact can't post or send messages in your name.
Can my family just use my password?
Not once the profile is a memorial. From then on nobody can log in, as a mother in Germany found out. Even before that, Instagram's own rules say it is always against its policies to log in to someone else's profile.
Who should I choose as my legacy contact?
Someone who will probably outlive you and whom you would trust with your photos. Ask them first, then tell them where the settings are. For your iPhone they also need the access key, so give it to them or keep a printed copy with your will.
Can I have my accounts deleted instead?
Yes, and you can arrange it in advance. Facebook lets you choose permanent deletion instead of a legacy contact, and on Instagram the option is called Delete After Death. Deletion can't be undone, which is why Instagram suggests talking the choice over with the people close to you first.
Sources
Press release 115/2018 of the Federal Court of Justice, Germany's highest court for civil and criminal cases, on its ruling of July 12, 2018: the fifteen-year-old girl, the memorial status that kept her mother from logging in, and the comparison with diaries and personal letters.
Parents have right to access dead daughter's Facebook account, German court rules, ABC News, Australia's public broadcaster, on July 12, 2018: that the case was about Facebook and a subway accident in Berlin.
Press release 119/2020 of the same court, on its decision of August 27, 2020: the flash drive with a PDF file of more than 14,000 pages, and the ruling that the mother must be able to look through the account the way her daughter could.
The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act of 2015, the model law of the Uniform Law Commission on who may access a person's accounts after they die. Section 4 sets out the three steps. Sections 7 and 8 separate the list of the people you wrote to from what you wrote.
Facebook's help page on legacy contacts, and Instagram's help pages on memorial profiles, on reporting a deceased person's profile and on legacy contacts, all accessed on September 24, 2026.
Making It Easier to Honor a Loved One on Facebook After They Pass Away, by Sheryl Sandberg, on Facebook's news site on April 9, 2019: the 30 million people a month.
Google's help page on its inactive account policy and its page on Inactive Account Manager, and Updating our inactive account policies, Google's announcement of May 16, 2023.
How to add a Legacy Contact for your Apple Account, on Apple's support site.
The picture with the nine logos is from my own idea folder.