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If your Gmail account has been abandoned for over two years, Google will soon remove it from the servers. The company has confirmed it will start deleting discarded Gmail accounts in December. The crackdown against inactive accounts starts with some accounts that were created but never used.
Tech companies have taken a severe approach toward inactive accounts. Recently, X, a company formerly known as Twitter, announced it would sell discarded usernames for a flat fee of $50,000. While X does this to increase its cash flow, Google is also considering a similar plan with inactive Gmail accounts- obviously not for making money but security reasons.
Inactive Gmail accounts will be removed from Google servers in December
As per Google’s announcement in May, the content stored in Gmail accounts with over two years of inactivity would be removed as the first phase of the account purge. The whole account will be removed from the company’s servers for the second phase. The process starts in December 2023. So, if you want to save one of your old Gmail accounts, you still have enough time to log in and save it from deletion.
The deletion process begins with accounts created by users but never used for any activity. Google clarified that Gmail accounts with YouTube videos won’t be removed for now. Additionally, the account deletion applies to personal accounts, and accounts belonging to schools and businesses remain unchanged.
Google says it intends to remove discarded Gmail accounts due to security concerns. The tech firm argues inactive accounts are more likely to be compromised and be used for malicious activities.
Inactive Gmail accounts eligible for removal have already received a notification on the account or the recovery email. To ensure if any of your unused accounts are at risk, check the account itself or recovery email. Google has surely sent you a notification.
Activating an old Gmail account is pretty simple. The only thing you need to do is to log into the account before December and start using Google services with it. This signals to Google that the account is active and should not be removed. Reading emails, using Google Drive, linking accounts to YouTube, and using Google sign-in to log into a third-party service are other positive signals to Google.