Google alerts users on removing inactive Gmail and Photos accounts

Google is once again revising its policy regarding inactive Gmail and Photos accounts. This time, the company has decided to pull off and delete the content for those accounts that have remained stagnant for at least 2 years and didn’t show any activity.

Recently, the Vice President of Google product management – Ruth Kricheli shared a short policy update on the official blog channel. The head warned users and said that the company has started looking after those Gmail and Google Photos accounts that are inactive for a long time.

Adding more, Ruth mentioned that Google could see those accounts and their content stored within Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar, and Google Photos and will begin purging them from December 2023. Don’t worry as you will receive plenty of notifications over the months regarding the deletion of those accounts that have not been signed in for two years.

• The policy will not immediately impact users with an inactive account – and will begin deleting accounts in December 2023.
• A phased approach – starting with accounts that users have created but never used again.
• Before deleting an account, users will receive multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion, to both the account email address and the recovery email (if one has been provided).

Explaining the reason, Google took this step for security reasons. Eventually, the internal analysis highlights that abandoned accounts are 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step verification set up. Besides, they are more open to spam and other malicious attacks.

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