And to my wife, I leave my… Facebook account

The social networking giant has the answer, memorialising it with a legacy contract, which has launched in the UK.

The company is now letting Brits set a “legacy contact”, handing a loved one or friend control of their account when they die.

You can also leave your account open as a memorial or tell Facebook you want it to delete the profile once you are gone, although someone will have to notify Facebook administrators of your demise.

Anyone nominated as an online executor will be able to write a post to be displayed at the top of the profile and will be able to change profile images on the page, and accept or decline new friend requests on behalf of the deceased.

Facebook account holders must be over 18 to nominate a legacy contact, presumably to prevent friends taking charge of the accounts of children.

“Other settings will remain the same as before the account was memorialised”.

Callison-Burch said at the announcement of legacy contacts: “We heard from family members who wanted to post funeral information or download and preserve photos”.

They are also unable to remove existing friends or read the late user’s past correspondences.

The statement said: “Until now, when someone passed away, we offered a basic memorialized account which was viewable, but could not be managed by anyone”.

However, Facebook, which has 1.44 billion users worldwide, said at the time that it was responding to hundreds of thousands of requests for this kind of feature.

They will not be able to post from your account, see your private messages or remove any of your friends.

Users could also have their accounts deleted instead.

Repeat the process to change your Legacy Contact.

Facebook users can nominate a legacy contact by going into their settings, choosing “security” and then “legacy contact” at the bottom of the page.