What happens to my user name in FamilySearch when I die?
As an example (not me, I am alive still) I am trying to contact a person who made a contribution to the tree. It appears that I will wait in vain, as that person has a family tree record for themself that is now marked as deceased (by user: FamilySearch).
I would like FamilySearch to "retire" or "deprecate" the userid of that person so that I know that that person will never answer me.
So back to the question: what happens to my username and others' ability to contact me when I pass away? And in the specific case I am interested in: how can FamilySearch make sure that anyone (trying to contact a deceased person) will know that the person is deceased?
Best Answer
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@BobGNY I couldn't find any documentation about the contact ID after a person dies. But I did some experimenting. I went to a person page where I know some of the contributors are since deceased. I found that I could click on their contact ID in the change log and then taken to the chat pop up. There was no indication that the contact ID belonged to someone who is deceased. This is much the same as what you observed. What I would suggest you do is go the "suggest an idea" category and suggest they do something like say unable to chat with this person or some other message.
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Answers
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What happens to the accounts of deceased users?
Article Id: 1269February 10, 2025Share
View As: Public Member
When FamilySearch receives proof of a user's death, two things occur:
- We disable their account.
- Their profile in Family Tree is marked as deceased.
When a profile is changed to deceased, the profile generally becomes publicly visible to all users of FamilySearch. Surviving family members can see a public profile and any public contributions, but they cannot inherit or gain access to a disabled account.
Notifying FamilySearch of a user's death
FamilySearch receives proof of a user's death in two ways:
- Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: A local clerk adds the death information to the deceased user's Church membership record. This information is automatically sent to FamilySearch and can appear as a duplicate profile. To learn how to merge duplicate profiles, view this article.
- Public users: A living person who knew the deceased user submits proof of death to FamilySearch Support.
For questions, please contact FamilySearch Support.
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A person who reserved ordinances has died, is incapacitated, or had a withdrawal of membership.1 -
Just to be clear, the name you see on changes made by a person is not the username. It is the contact ID. Usernames are never display or made public.
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OK about how FamilySearch knows about a death. Let me focus on "changes made by a person". I will refer to it correctly as the contact ID (not the user name) …
I have tried to contact a human who has a contact ID of "xyzpqr1" (made up obviously). The person associated with that contact ID (let's call them "Mrs. Xyz Pqr") is apparently deceased. There is a lot of evidence in the people record of Mrs. Xyz Pqr that xyzpqr1 is the contact ID for that human. (I can provide specifics to someone from FamilySearch if that will help)
Mrs Xyz Pqr is deceased based on a their Person record (updated by "FamilySearch"). Is there anything FamilySearch should have done or could do now or possibly should be doing in the future to make sure that I know that that that contact ID is no longer in use?
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@Quint Hurst Thank you for posting about Memories submitted by a deceased person. I know this is a different question than the original, but I have wondered a lot about it.
Best practices include tagging at least one person in the Memory. What if they are all living at the time it was submitted so no one was tagged? ("Private" wasn't an option for Memories submitted more than a year ago.)
Apparently these Memories are searchable if they have a title, but how does someone do such a search for things in a locked account?
I think I have protected all my Memories, but I want to be sure!
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I have submitted a new feature request as suggested.
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