Losing a friend or family member is painful enough, but imagine the extra, unnecessary jabs when that friend's social networking profile continues to pop up in searches. Or say your friend was particularly wise or witty when posting online, but when you went back to reference something later, the entire record was gone without a trace.

Today, many of us keep our profiles, blog posts, and musings entirely online, leaving family, friends, and service providers stuck trying to figure out what to do with a deceased user's digital bits.

I have a personal interest in this topic, as I'm of a generation that largely grew up with the Internet while our parents largely remain uninvolved (mine are surprisingly Internet literate, but most of my friends' parents aren't). An Ars reader and close friend of mine passed away in early 2008, and all of his online musings remain in limbo to this day—his MySpace profile is still active as if he was still around, confusing old high school friends, yet his blog has mysteriously disappeared and no one will be able to get it back.

This prompted us to start looking into various sites' policies on deceased users' accounts and what you can do about them—whether you want to preserve them, delete them, or otherwise.

Facebook

Facebook may not have been the first to create a specialized policy for deceased users, but it was one of the highest profile because of the way it handled the issue. Instead of merely agreeing to let a family member take control of the account, the company instead decided to take things a step further and let people turn someone's account into a memorial.

This is helpful for two reasons. First, it preserves that user's identity online so that people can come to the page, read about him or her, and leave posts on the Wall in remembrance. To those of us who live our lives online, there's little more terrifying than the thought of completely disappearing, and we like for our friends who have moved on to stay around online as well.

However, we don't like to constantly be reminded about that person's disappearance, so when Facebook converts an account into a memorial, the person in question no longer pops up in Facebook's friend suggestions (that would be awkward). The person's profile also automatically becomes private to everyone but confirmed friends, so vandals can't come by and trash the place without anyone there to clean up. Contact information also gets removed, and no one can log into the account in the future.

In order to do this, family or friends must fill out Facebook's special contact form and include proof of death (usually a link to an obituary or a news article). Unlike other social networks, Facebook actually allows nonfamily to perform this task, which is helpful in a situation where the deceased user's friends are more Internet-savvy than the family. As you can probably tell from our tone in this section, we're fans of Facebook's policy.

MySpace

MySpace also has a deceased user policy, but let's just say it's less "robust" than Facebook's. It's more of a standard policy that doesn't put as much thought into issues like privacy and searches, but it's there nonetheless.

In the case of a MySpace profile, a next of kin must contact MySpace via e-mail with proof of death and the user's MySpace ID number (not username).

"Unfortunately, we can't let you access, edit, or delete any of the content or settings on the user's profile yourself, but we'll be sure to review and remove any content you find objectionable," reads MySpace's policy.

Such a policy has problems, starting with the next-of-kin requirement. In my single, only-child friend's case, his only next-of-kin were his retired parents, and they don't use the Internet. As a concerned friend, I'm simply not going to call them up to have them e-mail a copy of my friend's death certificate to some unknown social network. It would be easier if I or one of his coworkers could do this instead; because we can't, we're defaulting on the side of tact and simply leaving his profile as-is.

Whoever manages to show proof of death won't be able to access or edit the profile. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if MySpace automatically made parts of the profile private like Facebook does; since it doesn't, the next best policy would allow next of kin to remove things like phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

This part of the policy is especially strange because of MySpace's admission right on the policy page that anyone who has access to the deceased user's e-mail account can use the "Forgot Password" link to retrieve it and then do whatever they want.

MySpace did not respond to our requests for further explanation of this policy.

Blogger, Gmail, Buzz, and anything else tied to a Google account

One benefit to having all of Google's services tied into the same Google account is that the company's policies and procedures generally cover everything. Such is the case when a user passes away; Google told Ars that it's all handled centrally and concerned parties just need to go through the steps once in order to gain access to everything.

Here's the good news: Google says it won't delete the blog, Buzzes, or anything at all of the deceased user until someone asks it to.

"We just leave it as is unless someone was able to access it," a Google spokesperson told Ars. This means that, without any intervention, a friend or family member's posts will remain online indefinitely.

If you don't want them to remain, or if you need access to the person's Gmail account for whatever reason, you must follow the steps outlined in Google's Help section. Again, you must be a lawful representative of the deceased (which means friends are out) and be able to provide proof of that authority. You must also include proof of death and a full e-mail header from the person in question to show that the person knew and was in contact with you.

After that, Google needs 30 days to process the documents, but notes that a "valid third party court order or other appropriate legal process" will get you access sooner.

In this case, we can understand why Google would have strict guidelines on who can access the account—this isn't just someone's social networking profile, it's access to his or her e-mail, contacts, and everything else associated with a Google account.

Twitter

Last but not least is Twitter. We spent three weeks trying to get in touch with Twitter to find out if the company has a policy on handling deceased user accounts, but the company has not responded to our requests.

In lieu of any official response from Twitter, we'll engage in some informed speculation. It appears as if the company does not have any sort of published policy on this matter. We have heard from multiple users, however, that Twitter has just deleted the timelines of users who have passed, much to the chagrin of friends who would have liked that person's postings to be preserved.

We were unable to confirm whether this has actually happened, but our reports indicate it only took place when Twitter was made aware of a user's passing.

In other words, if Twitter doesn't know about it, it's likely the account will be kept around indefinitely. Twitter users abandon their accounts all the time—the person who has the @joel account last tweeted almost two full years ago, for example, and his account is still there. We have no reason to believe this would change for any other user who drops off the face of the earth (literally or figuratively), so for now, we'll have to settle for that.

Update (8/9/2010): Twitter now has a slightly more formal method posted in its Help Center for family members who want to either remove or archive tweets from a deceased user's account.