The practice of deleting inactive accounts is something that has been around for a long time. Earlier this year, Google talked about how it will start deleting personal accounts that have been inactive for two years. Now, the company has finally announced that the process will start in December 2023.

Using your Google account before December is the only way you can avoid permanent deletion

The reason behind this is rather simple: Google claims that inactive accounts are easy to target by hackers since they are most likely using passwords that are not secure anymore. They are also targets for spam, phishing, hijacking, and more.

To ensure that Google does not mistakingly delete an account, the company has started sending out email reminders to users with inactive accounts on the affected accounts, along with recovery addresses. The email simply lets users know that their accounts are being deleted for security purposes. Those who will receive an email will have a message saying, “to protect your private information and prevent any unauthorized access to your account even if you’re no longer using our services."

If you are wondering what Google is going to delete pertaining to these accounts. Well, the company has talked about removing all data found on any of its services linked to a single account. So, your Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets, and everything will be gone; however, if you used your account to upload a YouTube video, that will not be deleted. Suppose you have received an email about the account deletion and want to prevent that from happening. In that case, all you have to do is send an email to someone from the affected account, download an app from the Play Store, watch a YouTube video, create a sheet, or upload something on Drive, but this will need to happen before December.

Another thing to note is that this purge will happen only to personal accounts. At the time of writing, Google will not be deleting enterprise or educational accounts. However, you do have to know that this account-deleting process is something that you cannot reverse unless, of course, you start using the account.

News Source: Independent