Did You Remember to Log Out?

Remember that time you left your MySpace account logged in when you were checking your comments at a friend's house? The next time you logged in, your sexual orientation had been reversed, your background was a tessellation of penises and your top 8 friends had been replaced by the worst fucking bands ever? Or maybe it was Facebook, and you left a tab open only to discover the next day that your mom wanted to know what would possess you to tell people that things between you two were 'complicated.'

It seems most people would have learned their lesson by now. (Always log out!) One's guard has to go up somewhere. But who am I to preach? I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't password-protect his phone with the thumb-twisters and pin codes. And yes, I've definitely lived to regret not locking my phone in some pretty advanced circumstances. I mean, I hate to take a dim view on monogamy, but isn't password-protection necessitated in any orthodox relationship? If you love each other enough, you give each other a little slack, a little room to escape. Amirite? I should have known better.

My best friend and I have known all of each other's passwords and pin numbers for years, and that knowledge has hardly ever led to abuse on either party. Really, it hardly ever has. My coworkers and I also share heaps of passwords. But as personal as they can be, nowadays, asking for someone's wi-fi password feels as commonplace as asking where the bathroom is.

How often does anyone logout, anymore? Unless it's to save energy and turn off a computer, who even does that anymore if not to follow some work protocol? E-mail is constantly open on devices too, pinging most users every time a message comes in. New sites don't even ask you for a password, they just want you to use an eternally-logged-in Facebook or Twitter account so they can suck and scrape your marketable data. Convenience is king, and being logged in seems to assert that royalty. For many, the Facebook profile is a vital organ of the social anatomy. And as an endless spectacle of status updates climb the infinite-scrolling screens, here are some reasons we'll all think twice before leaving a library computer logged in next time, courtesty Virgin Mobile Live:

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