Friends declare Facebook user 'dead' in social media prank

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Maine's Rusty Foster, 36, found out the hard way that it's pretty easy to fake a person's death on Facebook. As a prank, Foster's friends falsely reported him dead last week via Facebook's "Memorialization Request" page, which only requires the "deceased" person's name, email and a link to an obituary for the social media site to declare someone dead and block access to their account. Foster's friends used the real obituary of a different person with a similar name to trick Facebook into thinking he had died.

This is what Facebook considers a valid obituary of me. Cause they don't know where I live or that I posted after 2011. obits.al.com/obituaries/bir…

— Rusty Foster (@rustyk5) January 4, 2013

Facebook deactivated Herrman's account until about an hour after he filled out a special form. When Buzzfeed asked why it was so easy to fake someone's death, the social media site said, "We try to take all necessary precautions when processing user requests and provide an appeals process for any possible mistake we may make."

According to ABC News, Facebook reactivated Foster's account 27 hours after he reminded them he was alive, just enough time for his friends to play around with his "dead" status.

"The only thing that happened was some of my friends posted little mock-eulogies for me, because word got around that I was locked out, due to a temporary case of death," Foster said.

@anildash FB knows so much about me… why can't it tell that I'm not dead? It makes no sense. Only way I can figure it is they don't care.

— Rusty Foster (@rustyk5) January 4, 2013

Jezebel pointed out the story of a Buzzfeed commenter, who said that Facebook's simple "Memorialization Request" form caused confusion in the actual death of a friend.