How to protect your Facebook account while you are alive
Facebook lets the account holder name, in advance, who may act on the account after a death, through Legacy contact. While the account holder is alive, Meta Platforms allows authorized users.
Meta Platforms decides requests about a Facebook account after a death case by case, so nothing in its terms promises a survivor anything; what the account holder sets up in advance is what holds. Facebook lets the account holder name, in advance, who may act on the account after a death, through Legacy contact. While the account holder is alive, Meta Platforms allows authorized users.
How to protect your Facebook accounts
Naming who acts after a death
- Legacy contact
The holder can designate a legacy contact to manage the profile if it is memorialized. The setting is available only for the main profile, not additional Facebook profiles, and a minor cannot select a legacy contact.1, 2
What Meta Platforms, Inc.'s terms say about sharing and transfers2
- Transferring the account or registration
Facebook profiles are non-transferable. Section 3.1 of the Meta Terms of Service bars users from sharing their password, giving others access to their account, or transferring it to anyone else without Meta's permission.1
Section 4.5 of the Terms adds that a user will not transfer any rights or obligations under the Terms to anyone else without Meta's consent.1
- Workspace roles and admin access
Facebook Pages and Groups can carry multiple admins, which is the only continuity mechanism for those assets.3
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from Meta Platforms, Inc. primary sources (18 pages reviewed). How we research.
Facebook customer support
Facebook Help Center
Website
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