Google To Delete Inactive Accounts Over Security Concerns

People who haven’t sign to their Google account for more than two years will most likely lose it beginning from December 2023 because the tech giant says it will start to delete inactive accounts from its database.

According to the company, the action becomes imperative to protect its users from security threats such as phishing scams, account hijacking, and spam.

“Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step-verification set up,” it says in one of its May 16 blog post.

Why Google is deleting inactive accounts

It pointed out that even with some protections put in place by the account user, abandoning an account for an extended period of time expose it to be compromised.

This means, if an account is compromised, it can be used by the attackers for many things such using it to spread unsolicited messages and even malicious content.

Google is taking the deletion action starting from December 2023 to reduce risk across Google products.

The action also aligns with Google industry standards around retention and account deletion and to “limits the amount of time Google retains” users’ unused personal information.

What products will be affected?

When an account is deleted, content within the Google Workspace that will be affected includes:

Gmail,
Docs,
Drive,
Meet,
Calendar
YouTube and
Google Photos

Who will not be affected?

The latest policy on Google accounts only applies to personal accounts.

This means corporate accounts such as schools or businesses will not be affected.

While the Google policy on account deletion takes effect from May 16, 2023, deletion will not take place till December 2023 after several notifications have been sent to account owners.

The hammer will first land on accounts that were created but never used.