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I hit this exact problem last month in a hotel near Heathrow. I logged into my usual app site on the lobby Wi-Fi just to check whether a daily tournament had started, closed the tab when I was done, and thought nothing of it. The next morning I opened my laptop and the site still had me sitting in the account lobby. That was the moment I stopped assuming a closed tab means a closed session. The reason is simple: most app sites keep you logged in with a session cookie that lives in your browser until it expires or the server explicitly kills it. Closing a tab does neither. On a shared network, that leftover cookie is the easiest thing in the world to abuse if someone gets access to the same browser profile. A manual logout, by contrast, tells the server to invalidate the token right then. The difference is immediate. Here is the routine I use now, and it has become automatic. Use a private window for any community-hub login on a shared device
Private or incognito mode keeps the session cookie isolated. When I close that window, the cookie goes with it. I do this every time I touch a app site on a laptop or phone that is not exclusively mine. It takes five seconds and removes the biggest risk. Click Log Out before closing anything
The logout link is usually in the account dropdown at the top right, or tucked under Settings or Account in the footer. I look for it deliberately now. On most app sites I use, it is a small text link that is easy to miss if you are in a hurry. I treat it as the final step before I close the tab or the app. Do not save passwords on devices you do not own
I stopped saving passwords in the browser on any shared machine after a friend borrowed my laptop and got straight into my account because the site had remembered me. That one change has saved me from more awkward moments than I want to count. What I skip now
I no longer rely on closing the tab as a logout method. I also avoid staying logged in on a shared device just in case I want to come back later. If I am on public Wi-Fi or someone else's machine, every session is temporary by default. The goal is to remove the easiest opportunity for a problem before it exists. On a shared connection, the logout click is the cheapest security measure you have.