Countdown to Deletion: Don’t Lose Your Google Account!
It’s unlikely that you haven’t used your Google Account in a while, but if that’s the case, or if you have a secondary account that you don’t check often, be aware that Google will be deleting it on December 1, 2023, which is just a few days away at this point. .
Yes, Google will start deleting inactive Google Accounts along with all the data associated with them – photos, Gmail, contacts, Drive storage, and so on.
The important thing here is that your account is considered “inactive” if you haven’t used it for at least two years. So if you’ve logged in recently, you’re fine. But if you’re reading this and can’t remember the last time you checked your account, you’ll need to do one of the following to reactivate it:
- Read or send email from your Google account.
- Use Google Drive to upload or download content.
- Watch a YouTube video from the same account.
- Share a photo via Google Photos.
- Download the app from the Play Store with your registered Google account.
- Upload a YouTube video.
Why does Google delete “inactive” accounts?
In a policy change document published in May of this year, Google stated that it has “invested in technology and tools to protect our users from security threats such as spam, phishing scams and account hijacking”, but that if the account is not used for long periods of time, it can be “compromised”.
Google added: “This is because forgotten or unsupervised accounts often use old or reused passwords that may have been compromised, don’t have two-factor authentication set up, and the user performs fewer security checks. Our internal analysis shows that abandoned accounts have at least 10 times less more likely than active accounts to use two-step verification.”
Only “personal” accounts are affected
To be clear, this policy change only applies to personal Google Accounts. Accounts established by educational institutions and official company accounts will not be deleted. Accounts that have uploaded YouTube videos are also not affected.
