Google decides to get rid of the burden of inactive user accounts. The company will begin deleting them from December 2023, after two years of inactivity.
Also Google deletes accounts of users in certain specific circumstances. We have already seen that when your Google Account runs out of space and you do not purchase or renew a Google One subscription for a period of 2 consecutive years, the Mountain View company may delete your data. Think of situations where an account was part of a piano Google One only to be removed from the same floor.
Now Google has announced that it has updated the rules for the cancellation of user accounts that remain inactive for a long time. The Mountain View company explains that starting from December 2023accounts left unused for two years in a row can be removed “by the office”.
The rule only applies to personal Google accounts and does not affect accounts of organizations such as schools and businesses. However, the company led by Sundar Pichai has confirmed that in the case of personal accounts to which the user has no longer accessed in the last two years, Google will delete the data Gmail, Documenti, Drive, Meet, Calendar, YouTube e Photo.
Before deleting an account, Google will send multiple notifications in the months leading up to the deletion, both to the account’s email address and torecovery email, obviously in cases where one was indicated. Also, the deletion will happen gradually starting with those Google accounts that have been created but then never used.
How to keep a Google account and prevent it from being deleted
It may happen that a user has registered a Google account, used it for a certain period of time saving a fair amount of personal data and then no longer accessed it.
In these cases, for avoid deletion from Google, just log in then do one of the following: read or send an email, use Google Drive, watch a video on YouTube, download an app from the Play Store, use the Google search engine, use of the option Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service with your Google Account.
Google notes that forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old passwords or reused files that may have been compromised, do not use two-step verification and can be more easily attacked. Hence the company’s decision to “crack down” on user accounts that have been unused for 2 years or more. While Google doesn’t explicitly state this, there’s a good chance the company also made this decision to free itself from the burden of long-forgotten accounts that they take up space unnecessarily sui server cloud.