By Picture this. It’s a cheery Saturday morning. You’ve just woken up, performed your much-needed stretching ritual and you can hear the birds singing and the smell of dark coffee continues to serenade your nostrils. From this, you know it’s going to be a good day. However, before you get out of bed, you decide to check your socials and get up to speed with what’s happening. Unfortunately, to your surprise, you find out Facebook has proclaimed you dead!
You pinch yourself to make sure you’re still alive and call someone to make sure you’re still in the same realm. Fortunately, you’re still living and breathing but the question still lingers… what happened?
Well, this scenario happened to one @JackMassey and he had no clue on how to go about it.
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The ‘Death of Jack Massey’
Just woke up and found out I’ve died pic.twitter.com/dNXj0irBDG
— Jack (@JackMasseyWelsh) May 4, 2021
Jack woke up to find his social media accounts, namely Facebook and Instagram, in a ‘memorial’ status suggesting he was dead.
The message above shocked Massey and he took to Twitter to announce that he was still in fact alive. In as much as people made a few jokes from the situation…
it’s like i can still hear Him tweeting sometimes ?
— kobi (@ranbvr) May 4, 2021
… this is still a very serious problem and can affect not only you but those who love you as well. Imagine your friends and loved ones waking up to see your Instagram page ‘Celebrating Your Life’. That can be heartbreaking so let’s find out how to stop this if it happens to you.
What To Do When You Find Out You’re Dead on Facebook
To answer this, it’s best to find out first how this can happen.
How does this happen?
Well, for you to be declared dead, someone has to report to Facebook that you are in fact deceased. For this to happen, you have to request Facebook to memorialize the account of the deceased. You do this by Visiting the Memorialization Page and filling in the necessary information.
The information you need to fill in includes the link to the page, the date of death, and a death certificate. Anybody can report this and can then be termed as a legacy account holder. They are able to log into the account, change and delete posts, read messages, and remove friends.
Memorialization
Question: What happens to my account when I die?
Answer: If Facebook is made aware that a person has passed away, it’s their policy to memorialize the account. Memorialized accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away.
Memorializing an account also helps keep it secure by preventing anyone from logging into it. If the family or friends of the deceased do not want this, they can request Facebook to remove the account entirely.
Now in this case, how they got ‘Massey’s death certificate’ is yet to be known but to his relief he was able to get back his accounts and figuratively, resurrect from the dead.
How To Get Back Your Account
Facebook actually has a special page set up for users who find themselves in precisely this situation. It’s here: My Personal Account is in a Special Memorialized State. Another recommendation is to report a violation of Facebook terms. This enables users who cannot access their accounts to log in again.
However, no matter the case, Facebook should have some safeguards to stop this from happening again. We will reach out to Facebook to see if they are planning to set some up. Until then, stay alive.
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