How to automatically log out of Facebook
Leaving yourself logged into Facebook can cause all kinds of problems starting at embarrassment and moving on toward identity theft and beyond. Facebook Auto-Logout helps keep your account secure.
It may have happened to you or to a friend, but the odds are good that you've seen the results of someone leaving their Facebook account unattended. Maybe embarrassing comments were posted, maybe pictures were altered -- or maybe personal info was swiped and used for nefarious purposes. Logging out of Facebook is the best way to avoid these pitfalls, but perfect vigilance is impossible for us humans. Fortunately, a Firefox add-on called Facebook Auto-Logout can take care it for us. Here's how it works:
- Install Facebook Auto-Logout here.
- The add-on is enabled by default. From now on, when you close the Facebook window, the add-on will log you out.
- It will also log you out after 60 seconds of inactivity, which might not be enough for you. To increase the auto-logout time, just click Firefox in the top left, then Add-ons, then Options next to Facebook Auto-Logout. Change the number in the box near the bottom.
That's it! This is a very simple add-on that can save a lot of grief in the long run. If you want to learn more about Facebook's privacy tools, check out this great article by Sharon Vaknin. If your profile has been hopelessly compromised or you just want to nuke all your posts and comments for some reason, here's how you can do it.