Local woman trying to recover mom's Facebook account after stranger memorializes it
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News Center 7's Taylor Robertson meets with Hannah Couch and learns about how much this profile means to her and her family LIVE on News Center 7 at 11.
Couch says her mom, Soni May Shaw, used Facebook like a scrapbook, and now those memories are gone.
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'My mom, she was incredible. I don't think I've ever met someone who didn't love her,' Couch said. 'She was diagnosed with cancer in June of 2023 and it started in her lungs. She has the BRCA gene, and it mutated to an untreatable and incurable brain cancer.'
Shaw passed away last summer.
'She was a photographer, softball mom, a great grandma,' Couch said. 'She was actually kind of getting popular on TikTok out of nowhere. She posted, like, easy Sunday game day recipes to feed a family, because Sundays were her thing.'
After her mom passed, Couch found comfort reading through old posts. One day, she went to check her mom's profile and it was memorialized.
'The only thing that I can see is my memories that she's tagged me in or stuff that I've tagged her in,' Couch said.
Couch says she was shocked, and she immediately tried to find who had memorialized the page, but no one came forward.
'Somebody took that away from us,' Couch said.
It made Couch curious. How simple is it to convince Facebook someone is dead?
'I made a fake Facebook. I made myself the legacy contact and then I reported it to memorialize it,' Couch said. 'I found some old lady picture on Facebook, made it her profile picture, I put her picture with a ChatGPT obituary and all you have to do- you don't have to be logged into Facebook- I just went ahead through a Safari browser, report - memorialized.'
Couch says she has reached out to Facebook nine times since May and has only gotten one response.
'They basically told me that there was nothing that they could do. It was irreversible and once it's done, it's done,' Couch said. 'It's cruel and Facebook has to do something about it.'
News Center 7 reached out to Facebook to see if it's possible to recover Couch's mother's profile, but we have not heard back.
Couch says she is considering legal action, but she hopes it doesn't come to that.
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