It might be time to log in to any old Gmail accounts you want to hang onto. Google is doing some spring cleaning, and it may soon be sweeping away any accounts you don’t use regularly.
The tech giant has announced plans to get rid of inactive Google accounts, deleting Gmail, Google Chat, Google Drive and other services that haven’t been accessed in quite some time as it attempts to reduce security threats online.
In a blog post announcing an update to its policies for inactive accounts, Google’s VP of product management, Ruth Kricheli, announced that starting this December, any Google account that has not been used or signed into for 24 months or longer could be deleted—as will the contents of that account, including old mails, photos, calendar appointments, and any YouTube settings it might have.
The changes will only apply to personal Google accounts and not those of schools, organizations, or businesses.
“If an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised,” Kricheli wrote. “This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or reused passwords that may have been compromised, haven’t had two-factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user. Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step-verification set up. Meaning, these accounts are often vulnerable, and once an account is compromised, it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam.”
Google says it plans to take a phased approach to the account deletions and plans to send multiple notifications to both the account address and recovery email, if one exists.
To keep your account active, all you have to do is sign into it at least once every two years. (Google Photo accounts must be signed into separately every two years to remain active.)
It’s unclear if Google accounts that forward to your main email account will be affected. And YouTube accounts that are inactive won’t be deleted for now, reports 9to5 Google.
The announcement is one of the first major updates in three years to the inactive account policy. In 2020, Google said it would wipe data that was stored in accounts that hadn’t been touched in two years, but did not threaten to delete the accounts at that time.
To double down on the security protocols, Google will reportedly not allow people to reclaim the deleted addresses, since that may only make it easier for bad actors to send phishing emails and other malicious content.
While this is an expanded-deletion program, it’s hardly the first time Google has been strict about who can use its services. The company, for example, sends out warnings to people with Google Voice numbers who haven’t used them in as little as three months, alerting them the company plans to reclaim the number. (Users have a 30-day window after they get a warning to use the number.)
“Because phone numbers are a limited resource, it is our policy to reclaim unused numbers so they can be made available to new users,” the company said in its warning notes.
Google’s not the only company that’s deleting inactive accounts, either. Yahoo does away with them after 12 months of dust gathering. Microsoft shuts things down after two years of inactivity. And Twitter, earlier this month, announced it would remove accounts that have been inactive, and archive them. Twitter’s policy requires people to log into their accounts at least once every 30 days to avoid having it removed.
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