Rusty Foster discovered he was dead last week, at least according to Facebook.
He had been locked out of his account, which had been turned into a memorial page, because someone had reported him dead to the social media site.
He tweeted, Facebook thinks Im dead. Im tempted to just let it, then Did you know that you can report any of your Facebook friends dead & Facebook will lock them out of their account with no evidence needed?
As one of Fosters friends discovered, it doesnt take much to convince Facebook that somebody is dead. By simply going to the Memorialization Request page and filling out a form, including a link to an obituary, anybody can take someone else off Facebook.
The obituary needs to have the same name (or at least a close name), but doesnt need to match any other details on the profile.
Foster, 36, said he never got any notification his account was going to be locked, and only discovered it when he attempted to log in. He filled out a form to report the error, and received a response that began with We are very sorry to hear about your loss.
More than a full day later, Fosters account still hadnt been unlocked. Buzzfeed, tipped off by Foster, posted an article in which one editor killed another editor, John Herrman, on Facebook. According to the article, about an hour after Herrman reported the error to Facebook, his profile was reactivated. About an hour after that, 27 hours after Foster first reported his erroneous death, he was resurrected by Facebook and allowed back into his account.
Foster said the most frustrating part was not being able to get into his account to click the Im not dead button that should also be there.
From ABC News.
