Have you ever been in your school’s library or a friend’s house and realized, “Oh crap! I forgot to log out of Facebook”? Well apparently you’re not alone.
The social networking behemoth has begun to roll out a new feature that will allow users to see exactly where they are signed into Facebook – mobile phones, computers, Internet-connected TVs, etc. The new feature will allow them to deactivate their session from any and all of those devices.
The functionality is a great step for Facebook as it works to soften its image away from a company that has no respect for user privacy. In addition to naming the device of each active session, users will also see information about how long they’ve been logged in, the browser that was used, and the device’s approximate location.
This is a feature that I personally would love to see rolled out to a lot more online services. AOL’s Instant Messenger program gives users notifications when they’re logged in from multiple locations, and allows them to log out of every single one of them. However, there’s no information about what devices have been used to log in and it’s impossible to just log out of one or two.
E-mail providers and other services like Ebay and Twitter should look at this as the next step. Being able to log out of programs remotely is a very useful feature. Just ask anyone who’s ever had a significant other.
The Facebook feature will be rolled out slowly and once available, users will be able to change the option under the “Account Security” section of their Settings page.
