Google is moving ahead with its plan to delete inactive accounts as from the 1st of December 2023. The company announced the new policy back in May 2023 and according to Google inactive accounts are those that haven’t been used in at least two years. This update was and is intended to prevent security risks as internal findings over time have shown that older accounts are more likely to rely on recycled passwords and less likely to employ up-to-date security measures like two-step-verification, making them far more vulnerable to issues like phishing, hacking and spam.
The updated policy took effect immediately after the announcement in May 2023, but Google said it will not begin deleting accounts until December 2023. The company has been sending warnings to affected users with multiple alerts informing them to back up their data. In a phased approach, the first accounts to be deleted are those that were created and then never revisited by the user. However, the new policy only applies to personal Google accounts, meaning it does not affect school or business-managed accounts. In addition, Google will not remove accounts that have uploaded YouTube videos or have active subscriptions to apps or news services, the company’s updated account policy shows.
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Google accounts include everything from Gmail to Docs to Drive to Photos, meaning all content sitting across an inactive user’s Google suite is at risk of being erased. In the older policy, in 2020 Google said users would have their content wiped from services they’d stopped using, but the accounts themselves would not be deleted. To save your account, all you need to do is log in to sign into your Google account or any Google service at least once every two years and perhaps read an email, watch a video or perform a single search, among other activities.