Google deleting inactive accounts

[wheelsup_cavu]

I just got another email regarding them deleting inactive accounts. There was no distinction regarding accounts with uploaded content this time either. First ones are going to the digital grave yard in December.

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posted by me elsewhere in May Sorry for the delay.

Just giving everyone a heads up that Google is planning on going on a purge of inactive accounts at the end of the year...

- Matt Novak @ Forbes

Google To Delete Old Gmail And YouTube Accounts Not Used In Two Years
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/05/16/google-to-delete-old-gmail-and-youtube-accounts-not-used-in-two-years/?sh=17b0ab467103

Do you have an old Gmail account that you haven’t used in more than two years? You might want to consider logging in and sending a quick email or backing up the emails locally. Google announced on Tuesday it was changing its “inactive” accounts policy, and may delete Gmail, YouTube and Google Photos accounts that haven’t been used in at least two years, beginning at the end of 2023.

“Starting later this year, if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least 2 years, we may delete the account and its contents—including content within Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar), YouTube and Google Photos,” Ruth Kricheli, VP of Product Management at Google, said in an announcement published online Tuesday.

Kricheli went on to explain that this new policy only applies to personal accounts and won’t be implemented for business accounts. The Google account deletions will start in December 2023, which gives users just over six months to log in to their accounts if they’d like to keep them.

Why is Google doing this? It’s all part of a push for stricter security. Dormant accounts are less likely to have multi-factor authentication set up, a tool that was rolled out widely about a decade ago and provides significant protection against hackers.

“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,” Kricheli explained on Tuesday.

Google notes it will start by deleting accounts that were created but never actually used and will slowly turn to other accounts. Google will also send multiple warnings that an account will be deleted, something that likely won’t be seen by anyone who’s completely abandoned the account. But the tech giant will also send warning to the account’s recovery email, the address provided during sign-up as a back-up.

If you care about keeping your emails and Google documents for years to come, this is probably a great time to just download everything locally so you can keep your own back-up of data. The cloud is great, but having a local copy of old emails can be invaluable in the event something goes wrong. Because Google is fallible, and there are horror stories out there of people losing everything they had stored in the cloud.

“You can download and export your data to other platforms through our Takeout feature, which has been available for over a decade,” Kricheli wrote.

Google will reportedly not allow others to claim account names that have been abandoned and deleted, according to the blog 9to5Mac and confirmation I received from Google. But that’s a good thing. If the account for John.Doe @ gmail.com gets deleted, it won’t be available for someone else to scoop up. That account simply doesn’t exist anymore. That’s important because some other services will reassign account names, like Twitter CEO Elon Musk has promised to do during that company’s ongoing purge of old accounts.

Wheels

[wheelsup_cavu]

So far none of the ones I expected to be deleted have been taken down. They still show up in my subscriptions feed.


Wheels

[Shades]

Isn't that fair enough?
I mean if they haven't been used in two years, why not?

[wheelsup_cavu]

- Shades

Isn't that fair enough?
I mean if they haven't been used in two years, why not?

I would be bothered less if there was a support number you could call to regain access to a lost account. I do not know if you have ever been caught in their password reset/account recovery loop/hell but I would bank that there are several accounts that have not been accessed due to this problem. It almost cost me my YouTube account about 4 or 5 years ago.

I had not logged into the site in about 6 to 8 months and when I tried to login to my account Google locked me out even though I was using the correct password. How do I know that I was using the correct password? Lol, they sent me an email saying that it was the correct password and login name but they weren't going to give me access to the accounts because they didn't believe it was me.


Wheels

[Shades]

Heck no.
When something like that happens I just write it off to experience.
The account ceases to exist for me because I refuse to be held to ransom by automation.
If there's a person, fair enough, I'll have a go.
But I vote with my feet, in all circumstances.
When I feel inconvenienced by numptiness, I walk away and never look back.


My local bank closed during #1 lockdown.
I moved the account to a slightly further away bank.
It's just written to me saying that's closing.
So I went to move it slightly further away again, but still local to me.
Got there to find a notice on the window saying that branch is closing too.
Walked next door and opened a new account with their main competitor.
Screw 'em!
.

[wheelsup_cavu]

Lol for the most part I do the same thing when it comes to something of this nature but I actually wanted to keep the YouTube account due to some of the content I have posted and how long I have owned the account using my wheelsupcavu username which made it just a wee bit more difficult for me to just walk away and never look back.



Wheels