Call it ghoulish or poignant, but online memorials are helping people deal with bereavement in the same way as going to a funeral or leaving flowers at a crash site

About 15 lakh Facebook users die each year. Twitter faces a similar mortality rate. It's a growing problem for social-networking sites, and more so for the relatives left behind.

Reminders to "reconnect" with deceased friends and relatives, or the automatic deletion of dead people's accounts are only two of the ways in which social-networking sites can add to the pain of grieving friends and relatives. Which is why the sites are now being forced to deal with their dead.



Twitter to rest
Last week, Twitter finally announced that it has a policy on what happens to users' accounts after they die. Relatives can choose to delete or archive accounts, once they have provided proof that the account holder is dead and they have the right to act for the deceased.

But in order to achieve this, the grieving relatives must send Twitter their full name and contact details, their
relationship to the deceased, the username of the Twitter account and links to a public obituary that provides proof of death; hardly a straightforward process.

No more digital echoes
Nevertheless, the move could at least prevent digital echoes from bringing painful reminders of friends and
family who have passed away.

Friends of deceased Mumbai poet Dom Moraes, including author William Dalrymple, were reportedly stumped when they started receiving friend requests on Facebook from his grave in Mumbai. Or so they thought. It was his longtime companion Sarayu Srivatsa who had created a posthumous account instead of a community page.

The large friend and family circle of gregarious red head Shawn Khambatta didn't leave room for ambiguity, though. The Facebook memorial page dedicated to him is flooded with photos, videos and wall posts from 1,801 people close to the advertising student who passed away a week before his 22nd birthday.

"Today has made it seven long, long months," said his dad Erach Khambatta on August 9. His school friend Nishita S, now based in New Zealand, confessed: "You visited me in my dreams yest!! it was afterschool and we were playing basketball but instead you just started chasing me around the court -- ah miss ur cheeky grin!! Keep shining my lal bal." Classmates have posted six videos of him twirling a fire staff, singing to the Beatles and rocking a party. The memorialised Facebook page, it appears, is helping Shawn's friends and family cope.

Then, there is the kin of Pavit Singh who are keeping his memory alive through social consciousness. After his death on May 5 in a car accident in Chennai -- that could have been avoided had he been wearing a seat belt -- they turned Singh's profile page into the Pavit Singh Seatbelt Campaign. The campaign has over 1,200 followers. Volunteers distribute road safety pamphlets and have joined hands with the traffic police in seatbelt and helmet drives.

"We've created the Pavit Singh Road Safety Trust to proactively promote safe behaviour on roads," says Pavit's father Manjit Singh Nayar, head of the Trust.

Facebook after death
When the next of kin provides proof of death for an account, Facebook makes several changes to the privacy settings of an account and blocks access to prevent anyone unauthorised from logging in to the user's account or even sending fake messages from the grave.

"When an account is memorialised, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search," the company said in a statement on its blog. "We try to protect the deceased's privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorialising an account also prevents anyone from logging on in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile wall in remembrance."

So, morbid as it sounds, consider setting up and maintaining a file that includes details of accounts and passwords so that the next of kin or friend can take control of your accounts.

The Handbook
Know the websites that keep memories alive

1000Memories (.com)
It's the result of the passion of three friends -- Brett Huneycutt, Jonathan Good and Rudy Adler -- who have lost loved ones and believe that the Internet offers a better way by creating a central location for family and friends to share photos and memories. Each page is divided into five parts: Friends & Family, Photos, Stories, Projects and Guestbook. It also has a 'Projects' page for raising money for a favoured charity or cause.