In a move aimed at streamlining user data and enhancing account security, Google has announced its decision to delete inactive accounts that have remained unused for a period of two years or more in it’s latest policy update.
Alphabet owned Google is updating it’s inactivity policy for Google Accounts to 2 years across it’s products. Starting later this year, if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least 2 years, the tech gaint may delete the account and its contents – including content within (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar), YouTube and Google Photos.
The policy exclusively pertains to personal Google Accounts and does not impact accounts associated with organisations such as schools or businesses.
This revision brings Google’s policy in line with prevailing industry norms regarding data retention and account removal, ensuring the company limits the duration for which unused personal information is retained.
Google says the simplest way to keep a Google Account active is to sign-in at least once every 2 years to ensure account data is not wipped out.
Activity might include these types of 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
- Downloading an app on the Google Play Store
- Using Google Search
- Using Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service
According to other “inactive” documentation found on Google’s support system, “Android check-ins” are considered a valid form of activity. This implies that simply connecting an Android phone would suffice to maintain your account as active indefinitely.
Additionally, the documentation states that subscribing to Google One storage and making payments counts as “activity.”
Notably, Google Photos seems to have its own distinct set of criteria for determining “activity,” which could potentially lead to only your photos being deleted. To prevent this, it is necessary to either visit the Google Photos app or website or upload a photo every two years.
Mentioned in a blog post by Google, “abandoned accounts are significantly less likely, at least 10 times, to have 2-step verification enabled” compared to active accounts.
When these abandoned accounts are compromised, they can become channels for spamming and identity theft. Furthermore, deleting old accounts and freeing up storage is likely an effective approach to reducing costs, which has been a recent focus at Google.
The policy, which came into effect affect on May 16, 2023 won’t immediately impact users with an inactive account — the earliest Google will begin deleting accounts is December 2023. Google also stated users will receive a large amount of warning emails before an account is deleted.
