Technology in terms you understand. Sign up for the Confident Computing newsletter for weekly solutions to make your life easier. Click here and get The Ask Leo! Guide to Staying Safe on the Internet — FREE Edition as my thank you for subscribing!

How Do I Force My Email Account to Close on Another Device?

Question: Hello, Leo. I left my Hotmail account open on another device, meaning I logged in on someone else’s computer and forgot to close out. I think the individual left the page open, possibly viewing my email. They have a Mac. I have a PC. Is it possible to figure out if my Hotmail account is open on another computer? Is there any way of closing it out without having access to the other device? Perhaps by changing the password? Does your account have a timeout and automatically close? It’s imperative that this person not have access

Unfortunately, there are several reasons that you don’t want to log in to your email account on the computer of someone that you don’t actually trust. The possibility of walking away while it’s still logged in is really only just one.

Become a Patron of Ask Leo! and go ad-free!

Change your password

First things first: yes, change your password.

On most email systems that should invalidate any other open sessions, if not instantly, then after the open session times out. If it does not then no, I’m not aware of any way to force the other sessions to close. There’s typically a timeout, but it will vary from service to service and I’m actually not sure what it is for Hotmail.

Also, as long as you did not check “Remember Me”, your account credentials will be forgotten as soon as this other person closes the browser.

By the way, Gmail actually has a feature you probably want. It will show you how many other places the account is currently open and even have a “close other sessions” button, but I’m not aware of such a feature for Microsoft accounts such as Hotmail.

It begins with trust

Sign Out!Now, clearly, you don’t want this person to have access to your email. That makes total sense, but I really need to ask a harder question. How much do you trust this person? Really? Would he or she be the kind to use that access, however brief, to do something? Something like changing security settings or accessing your contacts list ?

If so, changing your password probably isn’t enough. You need to treat it like the account has already been hacked. I’ll point you at my article, “Email hacked, 7 Things You Need to Now” for what to do next.

Let’s get even a little bit more paranoid, shall we?

When logging into your account on another person’s computer, you’re placing an incredible amount of trust in that person. Why? Well, they could intentionally have key loggers installed. They could get access to your password or other credentials.

It doesn’t even have to be intentional on their part. They could have malware, in which case you could be exposing your account credentials to hackers. That’s why, first things first, change your password. Even if this doesn’t close the open sessions immediately ( though it probably will) it actually protect you from a variety of other possibilities. Possibilities that are sometimes, perhaps even more unsavory than having someone you know reading your mail: possibilities like someone you don’t know reading your email or even sending email from your account.

Do this

Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.

I'll see you there!

14 comments on “How Do I Force My Email Account to Close on Another Device?”

  1. Please help when I click on sign out , its not allowing me to sign out , there is another market links gets executed since morning I changed my password once again I logged in afternoon its not allowing me to log out .

    Please I need to logout before it gets hacked.

    {email address removed}

    Reply
  2. Hi Mate , how do i find the settings in live mail were it will log me out of may email account at work say in win live , and when im at home on my home pc log back in to live email. (so logging into may email at home will automatically log me out of my work pc.)

    And is there a way that i can make a password for one drive , that is different from my email pass word? so if email is left open friends cant open one drive and see my pictures.

    Kind regards wayne

    Reply
    • As the article says, to log out from home, you’d have to change the password. In order to separate OneDrive from your email account, you could change the email address associated with that account.

      Reply
  3. I have not been able to get on my hotmail for about 9 days now …my password is telling me someone may be on my hotmail what can I do ti close my emaail on every device

    Reply
  4. 1). I have the SAME hotmail account on iPad mini and iPad air……I want to delete my hotmail account from my iPad mini but NOT FROM my iPad Air.

    2). How to sign out of hotmail on iPad. There is no “button” or option available to do that. If people use my iPad they could read my emails, which is violating privacy; not good!

    Please give me advise/info. It’s very important.

    Thnx a lot

    Reply
  5. My gmail account has been hacked which is linked with my clash of clans game. I wont be able to retrieve it. So I want to link my clash of clans account to another gmail account and delete my current gmail account. How I can do this???

    Reply
  6. hey, can u help me? i opend my gmail account in another device, and unfotunatelly i marked “remember me”. now if i will change my password for my gmail account, from that device it will connect automaticly or requires to write new password?

    Reply
    • Read the article, it answers your question. In most cases, if you change your password, you will have to log in again on all devices, but this isn’t a sure thing.

      Reply
  7. Will changing my password on my hotmail account log me out of old device I no longer have ?I might have ticked the remember password when it was set up to old password .

    Reply

Leave a reply:

Before commenting please:

  • Read the article.
  • Comment on the article.
  • No personal information.
  • No spam.

Comments violating those rules will be removed. Comments that don't add value will be removed, including off-topic or content-free comments, or comments that look even a little bit like spam. All comments containing links and certain keywords will be moderated before publication.

I want comments to be valuable for everyone, including those who come later and take the time to read.