What happens to your Facebook account after you die?

Social media has allowed us to know of more deaths around us than ever before. So much so that we start to think if the death rate of human beings has increased. Have you ever wondered what happens to your Facebook account after you die? Facebook’s policy on this may change over time but as of now, there are a few possible scenarios:

No one has access to your account and no one put up a memoralisation request to Facebook

This is the least ideal situation. Your account sits in limbo. Acquaintances who don’t know of your passing might still post Happy Birthday wishes to your timeline yearly making your family and friends cringe and face palm every single time.

You die and your significant other/ family member has access to your password / access to an open session of your Facebook

This is really not the best way to maintain your account after you’re gone. It’s very freaky to have new posts coming from a deceased person. The correct way is to get your Facebook profile memoralised.

You die and your significant other / family member knows how to contact Facebook to memoralise your account

This is good but without a legacy contact, Facebook has no one to hand over (limited) control of your Facebook profile.

You die and your nominated legacy contact helps to memoralise and manage your Facebook account

If you do not want to disappear from Facebook upon passing, this is the best way to handle things. Your legacy contact will get limited access to manage your Facebook profile. Read on to find out more about legacy contacts.

You die and Facebook deactivates your profile once they are notified of your death.

You have final say on whether you want your Facebook account to be around after your passing. Once you have made this decision, no one else (even your legacy contact) can override this decision. The only exception is if someone has your login credentials and goes in to turn off this setting before Facebook gets notified of your death. For this to work, someone must report your death to Facebook. Otherwise, your account remains active. Having a legacy contact whom you have briefed to inform Facebook about your passing as soon as possible will greatly hasten the process to execute your wish to deactivate your profile once you are no longer around.

Legacy Contact

Facebook introduced a feature that allows you to nominate a legacy contact who will manage your Facebook profile when you’re gone. This person will not be able to logon to your account. read your private message, compose new posts or initiate friend requests but can do the following:

Change your profile and cover photos
Pin a post to your timeline that can include a final message from you, provide information for the wake/funeral/memorial service, etc (Your setting must allow people to post to your timeline for this to work!)
Accept friend requests. Initiating friend requests to others from your profile is not possible for obvious reasons.
Request deactivation of your Facebook profile

How to nominate a Facebook legacy contact?

Go to your Facebook settings by clicking on the down arrow on the top right corner of your Facebook page and choose Settings (The way to get there may change over time as Facebook updates their user interface)

Facebook Legacy contact

From there, choose Manage Account and you will see the full settings. You can optionally allow your legacy contact to download a copy of your Facebook data and/or request to deactivate your account when you die instead of memoralising it.

Facebook Legacy contact

How to memoralise the profile of someone who passed away?

Click here to fill up the form: Facebook Memoralisation Request Form

How to do a ECG/EKG test on the new Helo LX

We’ve received our new Helo LX and would like to show everyone how to perform an ECG test. It’s really simple! The most important tip is to remain very still during the measurement because movement causes stray electrical noise on the ECG plate and causes disturbances on the waveform. Good luck!

StarHub Happy Roam for my Taiwan Trip

Disclosure: Although I work in StarHub, I do not work in Marketing, Sales or the Prepaid product team. I have no personal vested interest in the prepaid product, I paid for the prepaid card with my own money and nobody in the company asked me to write this. I am writing this as an original content for my personal blog and also because out of my 5 trips to Taiwan, this is the first time I did not buy their local prepaid card.

Since this is my 5th time in Taiwan, I’ve gotten pretty sick of queuing at the Taoyuan International Airport and having to present 2 photo IDs in order to sign up for a Taiwan prepaid card. It didn’t help that one traveller is only entitled to purchase 1 prepaid card. This had me scrambling to collect 2 photo IDs from each family member in order to get a prepaid card for each of them. Cost wise, a 10-day unlimited prepaid data plan from Chunghwa Telecom costs $500 NTD (~S$22.70).

In the past, roaming data charges had been prohibitively expensive for casual travellers like me. Although I’m not in ops, I’ve been hearing about how affordable (planned) data roaming can be so I’ve convinced myself to give this a try.

I have a choice between Data Travel and Happy Roam. Without going into the specifics of both, I can highlight that Data Travel is more convenient as you can use your existing StarHub postpaid SIM to roam in a controlled manner. Downside is, the price is a tad more expensive at 2GB/30days/$15 (Data Quota / Validity / Price) compared to Happy Roam’s 1GB/3days/$5. The minor inconvenience for Happy Roam is that you need to get a StarHub Happy Prepaid card.

For me, personally, I’ve already had the intention to plug a SIM into my Mobile Wi-Fi device anyway so an additional SIM means I don’t have to remove my current SIM from my iPhone.

For that reason, I decided to go with Happy Roam. Researching deeper, I found that the Data quota is stackable – I can pay double of $5 to get double the data and double the validity period. This can be stacked all the way to 10GB/30days/$50 as shown in this table below:

Data Quota	Validity	Price
1GB	3 days	$5
2GB	6 days	$10
3GB	9 days	$15
4GB	12 days	$20
5GB	15 days	$25
6GB	18 days	$30
7GB	21 days	$35
8GB	24 days	$40
9GB	27 days	$45
10GB	30 days	$50

Since my prepaid card came with a promotional free 5-day 15GB local data, I did not have to worry about credits depleting due to background data usage just because I put it into a smart phone. If yours does not come with promotional free local data for the first X days, remember to turn off mobile data before inserting the prepaid SIM!

To manage your data usage while overseas, download and install the Happy Prepaid App

You’ll be prompted to enter your Prepaid number and confirm the OTP that is sent to that number. I’ve noticed instances where OTP isn’t required such as when the prepaid SIM is inserted in the same phone that is running the app. Once authenticated, you can go ahead and purchase the plan.

Purchase the plan 3 times if you need 3GB. For me, I had to purchase 5GB despite free Wi-Fi at most of my accommodation in Taiwan since I’m such a heavy social media user.

Do remember to check your balance regularly so that you have ample time to top up and add on an extra GB or 2 if necessary.

Conclusion

The following list of Pros and Cons are solely judged based on my trip to Taiwan.

Pros

Skipped the queue at the airport. I was able to get online right after touch down before even arriving at the gate.
Price comparable or even cheaper compared to a Taiwanese prepaid SIM if your data usage is 5GB or lesser.

Cons

I had to monitor my data usage carefully on the StarHub prepaid SIM as it is not unlimited like the local Taiwan prepaid plans.
There’s a hassle to switch out my original SIM with this new prepaid SIM unless I’m using an external Mi-Fi device.

In the end, I used more data than I expected and had to top up another 2GB on top of my budgeted 3GB but that’s my problem. I would use Happy Roam again definitely if I’m heading to a country where I foresee myself not being able to (or want to) queue at the airport telco counter.