cross-posted from: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/545658
Inactive Google Account Policy
A Google Account gives you Google-wide access to most Google products, such as Google Ads, Gmail, and YouTube, using the same username and password.
An inactive Google Account is an account that has not been used within a 2-year period. Google reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data if you are inactive across Google for at least two years.
Google also reserves the right to delete data in a product if you are inactive in that product for at least two years. This is determined based on each product’s inactivity policies.
How Google defines activity
A Google Account that is in use is considered active. Activity might include these actions you take when you sign in or while you’re signed in to your Google Account:
- Reading or sending an email
- Using Google Drive
- Watching a YouTube video
- Sharing a photo
- Downloading an app
- Using Google Search
- Using Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service
Google Account activity is demonstrated by account and not by device. You can take actions on any surface where you’re signed in to your Google Account, for example, on your phone.
If you have more than one Google Account set up on your device, you’ll want to make sure each account is used within a 2-year period.
What happens when your Google Account is inactive
When your Google Account has not been used within a 2-year period, your Google Account, that is then deemed inactive, and all of its content and data may be deleted. Before this happens, Google will give you an opportunity to take an action in your account by:
- Sending email notifications to your Google Account
- Sending notifications to your recovery email, if any exists
Google products reserve the right to delete your data when your account has not been used within that product for a 2-year period.
December 1, 2023 is the earliest a Google Account will be deleted due to this policy.
I won’t be too affected by this as I already had my account set to delete after 1.5 years of inactivity. If I can’t log into my emails for almost 2 years, it probably has no reason to exist anymore…
My Hotmail accounts got deleted in under three months of not logging in, I think that was around 2004-5 when I first got Gmail. So much of my personal history is gone and it’s a shame. I would love to see some of my old correspondences. I was such a different person then.
I completely agree with you, I lost my original yahoo account right around that time and i think about it pretty regularly, i just want to see what was in there one more time.
Has compute/storage suddenly gotten alot more expensive or something? Or are they purging to make more room for AI
I would be curious to know just how much data google has sitting in inactive accounts.
Probably in the petabytes. The issue is probably that the accounts keep growing even after the user stops using them with spam and there’s no way for google to make money off of it.
This for personal accounts right? Or are they thinking of workspace accounts as well?
Business accounts will not be affected.
May be because, the Google can’t even steal data from this accounts anymore…
They can steal the data and cross reference it, which is why they kept it for so long. Deleting old data, whose user consent is dubious at best is a good thing. I wonder if they are doing it for cost savings or because they are worried with legal issues over keeping data the users forgot about forever, because it wasn’t because they care about privacy for sure.
