What happens when somebody who has a Facebook/Myspace/Bebo profile dies?

[swelwynemma]

[Visuallawyer855]

Nothing...unless someone physically goes into their profile page and deletes it.

[zqert988]

Like any other account it will be deleted once it becomes inactive after a certain period of time.

[Rajesh]

what a silly question it is !

[May]

the account will never be opened again...unless someone else knows the password and open it [then pretend to be the person who owns the account]-that's bad! and..is somewhat creepy for the person who's seen he/she logged in even though he's...GONE. o_o =X !@#$

[Bill M]

The account owner could leave instructions for a friend or relative to post an announcement that he/she has died.

[Paranormal Kitty]

Usually their friends will leave a bunch of comments in memory of the person. If no one can get into their account, it will be deleted after a certain amount of disuse assuming the site does that. Friends or relatives might also ask for it to be taken down. If the site has no rules on how often a person must log in before the account is deleted and no one asks for it to be deleted, I assume it would just stay in cyberspace forever.

When I was researching the alt.suicide.holiday newsgroup for a sociology paper, some of the sites had links to web pages and profiles of members who had committed suicide and they were still up, usually filled with remembrances from friends and family.