Linkedin digital legacy guide

Overview

Linkedin is the most popular business social networking site across the globe used by over 300 million users worldwide. For many of us, the lines between our personal and professional life has become increasingly blurred. It may therefore be important for you to make plans as to what you would like to happen with your Linkedin profile once you die and the data it contains

Making plans for your Linkedin Account

Below are a range of different things you may want to review and consider when deciding what should happen to your Linkedin account upon death. You may want to use our free social media will template when documenting your wishes.

Paying for a Linkedin premium account

It is estimated that a third of all Linkedin users have a premium account. The charges for a premium account start at £18 / $30 USD per month. If you are nearing the end of your life or carrying-out executive tasks for the deceased you may want to revert the account back to a ‘free’ account (or close it).

Transfer administrative access to any groups that you are an administrator for

If you are an administrator of a group on Linkedin you may wish to transfer administrative access to it to a third party. This will help ensure that the group remains active in your absence. Furthermore Linkedin will not allow you to close your personal Linkedin account if you are an administrator of an active group.

Leave your Linkedin password to one or more friend or family members

Leaving the password for a Linkedin account to a trusted friend or family member can help bring closure to your business affairs and be used as a tool to help inform your business contacts that you have died. This can also be useful for those left behind when announcing arranging a funeral.

Send out a message stating that your are on a leave of absence

If you decide to go on medical leave for a short of prolonged period after a serious diagnoses you may want to inform those you work with using Linkedin.

Ask your next of kin to send out a message after death

If you pass on your email address and password to your next of kin you may want to write a message and ask a loved one to send out a good bye message on your behalf. Ideally such this instruction would be included or appended to your last will and testament.

Request that your Linkedin account is closed in your will

Linkedin provide a way for those recently bereaved to close down a loved one’s Linkedin account. Linkedin do not however allow for the ownership of a Linkedin account to be officially or legally transferred to the next of kin.

Exporting your LinkedIn data

Linkedin allow each user to download all of their ‘connections’ email addresses saved in their contact list. It may be worth downloading your contact list in order for it to be passed on to your next of kin. This could help enable the recipient of the email list to send email invitations to your funeral when the time comes.

Simply go to https://www.linkedin.com/people/export-settings and download your contact list as a CSV

You will need to add the security code provided by Linkedin for security reasons (do not use the image shown on this tutorial,it was assigned to me and will not work on your account)

Once you have followed the process above the file will be saved on your computer. The image below shows how the file appears when it is downloaded to a Mac. If using a windows PC or laptop it will appear differently.

When you open the ‘CSV’ file it will open the contact list using Microsoft’s Excel (if you have Excel saved on your computer). If you are unable to view the file due to not having the relevant software you should consider uploading the file to ‘Google Drive’ and opening it using Google’s free, Google sheets.