Google has planned to delete millions of Gmail accounts starting next month. The good thing about this is that the company will only target the accounts that have been inactive for a long time.
In December 2023, Google will deactivate millions of gmail accounts that have remained inactive for a minimum of two years.
Google Vice President of Product Management Ruth Kricheli wrote in a blog post in May that when an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised.
“This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven’t had two-factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user,” Kricheli said.
As per an internal analysis by Google, abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have a 2-step-verification set up, making them more vulnerable to attacks.
“To reduce this risk, we are updating our inactivity policy for Google Accounts to 2 years across our products. 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) and Google Photos,” the post said.
The updated Google policy gives the company authority to delete both the account and its associated content within Google Workspace.
What can you do?
If you want to keep your Gmail account that you haven’t used for the last two years, you simply have to log into it. If it helps, the login doesn’t have to be specific to Gmail, you can log into any Google service to register your activity.
Once you do that Google will probably ask you to update your account settings, activate 2-step verification, and so on.
You can also keep your account active by doing one of the following actions: Reading or sending an email, using Google Drive, watching a YouTube video, downloading an app on the Google Play Store, and using Google Search.