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The number of dead people on Facebook will outnumber living members of the social network by the end of the century, a statistician has claimed.

The social network, which currently has 1.5 billion users worldwide, will turn into the world's biggest "virtual graveyard" by 2098.

Facebook's refusal to automatically delete dead users, together with the site's plateauing membership numbers, means that the living will be outnumbered even sooner than previously thought.

Hachem Sadikki, a PhD candidate in statistics at University of Massachusetts , said that he worked out the figure by assuming that Facebook's growth will begin to slow soon.

In the US, 70% of the adult population has signed up and in the UK the number is more than half.

(Image: PA)

Sadikki also assumed that Facebook will retain its existing policy on how to handle dead users.

Currently, when a user dies, Facebook does not delete the account and instead turns into into a 'memorialised' version of the page.

The only way to delete the account of a dead person is if somebody has their password and can login and close it down.

But given that few people give anyone their Facebook login, the page is likely to stay up long after they have died.

Online legacy planning company called the Digital Beyond has claimed that 970,000 Facebook users will die this year alone across the world.

That compares to 385,968 in 2010 and 580,000 in 2012.

Facebook's policy on dead users had led to criticism as some families want more control over how their loved ones are remembered online.

Some dead people still appear as having birthdays in users' news feeds and alerts, despite having passed away.

Facebook has tried to get around the problem by asking users to appoint a 'Legacy Contact' - a sort of online executor, to decide what happens to their profile after they die.

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The Legacy Contact can administer the page after the user passes away by writing one last post, updating their cover and profile photo and even approving new friend requests.

Users can also choose to give their Legacy Contact additional permission to download an archive of the photos, posts, and profile information they shared on Facebook.

All other privacy and audience settings remain the same as before the account was memorialised, according to Facebook. The Legacy Contact cannot to log in as the person who passed away, or see that person’s private messages.

Facebook declined to comment when asked about its own projection for when dead users will outnumber the living.

Read more:'Online graveyard' allows bereaved families to build internet memorial as a virtual resting place