Google To Remove Inactive Gmail Accounts Soon (Image: Unsplash)

If you have any Gmail accounts that you have not used in a while, you should be careful, as those unused accounts will be removed soon as part of the new Google policy. On May 16, 2023, tech giant Google announced that they would delete accounts that had been inactive for two years or longer. Google also informed that the deletion of unused accounts will begin in December 2023.

According to Google, 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 mentioned on its support page. Google says that if an account has not been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised. Google believes that abandoned accounts are easy targets for hackers and fraudsters. Once an abandoned account is compromised, it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam.

According to Google”s internal analysis, abandoned accounts are over 10 times less likely to have 2-step verification set up compared with active accounts. Google also clarified that its inactivity policy is applicable only to personal Google accounts and will not affect accounts for organizations like businesses or schools.

If you want to stop Google from deleting your account, you have to log in to it at least once every two years. You can also make your account active with certain actions, including reading or sending emails, accessing Google Drive, or simply watching a YouTube video while logged into the Google account. Apart from this, Google will consider your account as active if you have an active subscription, such as Google One, created through your Google account. It should be noted that users will also receive multiple notifications from Google before removing an account.