Key highlights
- Google will delete accounts that have been inactive for two years.
- The company introduced this policy in June of this year.
- It will send notifications to users before taking any action.
Finally, Google will take action against inactive Gmail accounts. According to an update to its inactivity policy, it will delete your Google account and everything in it if it has been inactive or if you have not logged in for at least two years.
As we said, everything connected to your Google account, so content from your Gmail, Google Photos, Meet, Calendar, Docs, Drive, as well as YouTube, will be permanently destroyed and cannot be recovered later on. So if you have not used your Google account till now, then it is a matter to be noted because you will lose all your data because your account will be considered inactive.
Note that this is applicable for individuals whose personal account has been untouched for at least two years to send or receive mail and use other services attached to the account. But if your employer, college, institution, or school has created your account, then you do not need to worry because this does not apply to you.
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Also, Google will first drop the bar on accounts that have never been used or untouched. But before it makes this big move, it will notify the users several times. Google will also take into account any existing subscriptions you may have set up through your Google Account, for example, to Google One, a news publication, or an app. In this case, your account will be counted as active, so it will remain unaffected. Also, Google will not destroy accounts with YouTube videos at this time.
Well, now you might be wondering why Google is going to do this. On this, Google said that “if an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised. This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven’t had two-factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user. Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step verification set up. Meaning, these accounts are often vulnerable, and once an account is compromised, it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam.”
How to avoid Google from deleting your account?
- Reading or sending an email
- Using Google Drive
- Watching a YouTube video
- Downloading an app on the Google Play Store
- Using Google Search
- Using Google Sign-in to sign in to a third-party app or service
