If you have any Gmail accounts that you haven’t used in a long time, you may need to act quickly to keep them.
Millions of Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos accounts could be deleted as a result of a new policy from Google.
In the event that you’re especially enamored with keeping your messages and reports in presence and are going crazy over the news, don’t worry.
First of all, the policy will only affect accounts that haven’t been used in more than two years. This means that it will most likely affect the accounts you set up but forgot about or the embarrassing email address you set up as a kid.
Second of all, this record cleanse won’t kick in until December 2023 – so in the event that you’ve been logged out of a Google account that you need to save, you have around a half year to sort out the secret word.
Thirdly, only personal accounts will be affected by this. The email address you reserved for your business, which you absolutely intend to use but haven’t yet, is completely secure.
The primary reason for this new policy is fairly straightforward: it’s to make you more secure online.
Security threats, spam, viruses, and hijacking are more likely to affect older, less frequently used accounts.
Google stated the specifics in a recent blog post: Abandoned accounts are 10 times less likely than active accounts to have 2-step verification set up, according to our internal analysis.
This means that these accounts are frequently susceptible to attack, and once compromised, they can be used for anything from identity theft to spreading spam or other malicious or unwanted content.
“We are updating our inactivity policy for Google Accounts across all of our products to two years to reduce this risk.”
“Starting later this year, we may delete the account and its contents – including content within Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar, and Google Photos) – if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least two years.”
There are a few easy things you can do to prevent the mass removal of your account and keep it active.
Most importantly, sign-in to your Google account no less than once like clockwork.
Second, any accounts that are deemed to be active will not be deleted; therefore, send or read an email, conduct a Google search, view a YouTube video, or download an application from the Google Play Store.
In addition, any subscriptions you have linked to your Google Account, such as an app, news publication, or Google One, count as account activity.
This indicates that you wouldn’t have to do anything at all to keep your account active.
Again, you don’t have to worry about keeping your old Google Accounts alive until December 2023.
Customers were also assured by Google that: We will send multiple notifications to both the account email address and the recovery email (if one has been provided) in the months leading up to the deletion before deleting an account.
So both you and your record can breathe a sigh of relief.
