Facebook has a "memorial" option which is supposed to be used to help manage the page of someone who has died.
People don't generally leave behind their Facebook passwords when they die, so their Facebook accounts continue on. The memorial state essentially turns your profile into a virtual shrine.
This is a kind, thoughtful gesture from Facebook to address a growing issue for the social network.
Well, no good deed goes unpunished, as they say.
BuzzFeed's Katie Notopoulos has figured out that you can use the "memorial" option to totally screw over a friend and lock them out of their account.
To turn someone's account into the "memorial" state, all you have to do is enter their account URL, say if you're a friend or family member, and then paste in a URL to an obituary for the person. The trick is that Facebook has let down its standards and you can paste in an obituary for anyone, as long as the names are the same.
WARNING: We don't recommend that you do this.It's rude and annoying. The only reason we're covering it is so that you can be aware that other jerks might do this to you.
BuzzFeed got in touch with Facebook and was given this response: "we try to take all necessary precautions when processing user requests and provide an appeals process for any possible mistake we may make."
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