Your phone was dead and you couldn’t go half an hour without checking your Facebook page. So you signed in at a friend’s house, or maybe even an Apple Store or a Best Buy, and then left without logging out. Now your Facebook page is open for any random passerby to post whatever they please. Smooth move.

Fortunately for you (and every other person in the world who’s pulled this one), Facebook has a built-in way for users to remotely log themselves out of any device they’re currently signed into. We’d like to impart this information to you now so you can avoid friends and strangers embarrassing you with posts like this one:


So here’s how to log out of your Facebook from afar.

Log into your Facebook account from any desktop computer. From the home page, you’ll see a gray settings gear icon in the top-right corner. Click that and choose Account Settings from the drop-down menu that pops up. Next click the Security tab on the left side of the screen (it has a police badge icon), and you’ll see the Active Sessions label last on the list. Click this, and you’ll see all your recent account activity, as well as the devices it happened on and the rough location where it took place.


To the right of each activity session description, there is an End Activity option that will log your account off the device listed, remotely putting the kibosh on any unauthorized Facebook mischief-makers.

Now, we don’t recommend using this feature as an excuse to just go logging yourself into every computer you touch willy-nilly. Even with this “Mayday” option to log yourself out remotely, and the ability to delete posts that you didn’t authorize, you still don’t want to leave yourself open, even if it’s for a little while.

Because if you’re depending on strangers not to post something embarrassing to your Facebook page  well, it might not go too well.