You can use social media accounts as a place for family and friends to gather and share memories of a person who has passed away.
Some services now allow an account to be memorialised, which means it is preserved with a limited number of people allowed to post to it. However, the whole area is quite complex, and getting in touch with social media companies can take some time.
Who owns and can access a person’s photos, music, and social media content when they die? There is an ever-increasing interest in how digital assets are dealt with on death.
Many of us use digital and social media every day without giving much thought to who owns the images and other information we upload and share. Very few of us probably bother to read all the small print that goes with the programs and apps we use, and the rules are usually written in legal language that can be difficult for untrained people to understand, however intelligent they are.
In recent years, the law has tried to catch up with the constant developments of social media, and the companies who provide these services have started to provide more information to help people understand what action they need to take to delete or memorialize accounts.
It’s possible to create a digital memorial for someone who has died.
Much Loved is a charity that exists specifically for this purpose and enables people to donate online in memory of the person who has died.
The Gazette – Official Public Records website has the following guides for Protecting (and recovering) digital assets: online banking to bitcoin and What happens to digital assets on death.
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