Google will delete long inactive accounts and all their content

If you haven’t used your account for a long time Googlenote: Mountain View plan delete all inactive for at least 2 years. Thus, the company seeks to protect users from attacks from phishing or spam and malware campaigns.

As the Californians explained, this measure is in line with a modification to their existing inactive account policy. Until now, Google could delete content stored on services like Google Photos or Gmail if the account was inactive for 2 years. However, this time they decided to go even further.

If there is no activity in your Google account for two years, it will be completely removed. And the same will happen to all content linked to it via Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Photos, etc. The plan will launch in December.

It is worth clarifying that the measure will only affect personal accounts. Those who belong to companies or other types of organizations will not be affected. In any case, Mountain View representatives have indicated that the activation of this new policy will not happen overnight. They also do not plan to delete Google accounts without prior notice..

Google is changing its inactive account policy

According to Google, the deletion of accounts will occur in stages. and the first to disappear are those that were created and never used. In addition, those at risk of removal will be informed several times and several months in advance.

The latter may sound a little silly, because if they are inactive for at least 2 years, there is a good chance that no one will see these notifications. For this reason, the company will also send recovery email notifications if provided by users.

Google security experts say that accounts that remain inactive for long periods of time often become valuable prey for hackers. This is dangerous because, for example, if they are hacked, they can be used to impersonate their original owner and lure them into fraud and other types of cybercrime. In addition, they claim that in this type of abandoned accounts 10 times more likely to not have 2-Step Verification enabled.

If you have a Google account that hasn’t been used for 2 years or more, but you don’t want to delete it, follow these very simple steps. Mountain View Residents Recommend entry at least once every 24 monthsalthough this is not the only option.

They also invite users to use Google Drive, watch YouTube videos, or download apps from the Play Store. The latter can be useful if the account is not used regularly, but is logged in on some device. If they prefer to retrieve account content before it is deleted, they can export a copy using Google Archiver.