Your Gmail account may be at the risk of deletion for security reasons after December 1st
Recently, Google’s official blog post announced that “An inactive Google Account is an account that has not been used within a 2-year period. Google reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data if you are inactive across Google for at least two years.”
Users won’t be impacted by this upgrade if they use their Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and Photos accounts on a regular basis. It’s also important to note that Google is emailing individuals who are impacted. Thus, your account should continue to be protected if you haven’t heard from the IT business.
Google also clarified that this policy is only applicable to user’s personal accounts while their work, school, or other organization emails remain unaffected.
Reason for deleting accounts
According to analytics made by Google, inactive accounts are ten times more vulnerable to hackers because they lack the two-factor authentication. They are even exposed to data threats by hackers because of reused passwords by abandoned accounts.
What happens to your inactive Google account
According to Google policies, a Google account is considered dormant after two years of inactivity, at which point all of its contents and data may be removed. Google will give you the chance to take action on your account prior to this happening by:
“Sending email notifications to your Google Account;
Sending notifications to your recovery email, if any exists,” said Google.
They further added, “Google products reserve the right to delete your data when your account has not been used within that product for a 2-year period.”
This policy is going to take action from December 1st, 2023 as stated by them.
