Google, in its quest to create a stronger and more secure experience for all its users, just let the world know that if your account has been dormant for two years or more, it’ll be gone come December 2023. They don’t take any chances—along with the account itself, everything stored in Google Workspace, YouTube, and Google Photos will also be deleted for good. So, if you haven’t logged in for a while now might be a good time to do so!
To prevent your account from going stale, you just need to do a few tiny things like reading emails, using Google Drive, streaming a YouTube video, grabbing an app from Google Play Store, logging into a third-party service via your Google profile, or searching on Google with your logged-in status. See? Nothing too hard!
Google will send “multiple notifications” to users before deleting an account, and the purge will begin with accounts that were established but never used again. This new regulation, however, will not affect corporate or school accounts.
Google made the change after discovering that abandoned accounts are far more likely to be hacked than active accounts. According to internal corporate research, such accounts are at least ten times less likely to have two-step verification enabled, leaving them exposed to security breaches. Once an account has been compromised, it can be used to commit identity theft or to distribute harmful information such as spam.
It’s unclear what Google intends to do with the usernames of deactivated users. Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, recently revealed similar intentions to erase dormant accounts and recycle identities.
To summarize, Google’s new policy is a great step toward improving user security. Users must ensure that they utilize their accounts on a frequent basis in order to avoid deletion and keep their personal information protected.
