There is always that extra Google account most of us have for marketing mails. We don’t access it and we usually don’t care about it. But that needs to change because Google will begin to delete accounts that have been inactive for two years or longer. It will have an effect on Gmail, Google Photos and Google Drive associated with that account. There is time before the purge begins — December.
Ruth Kricheli, Google’s vice-president of product management, said in a statement: “People want the products and services they use online to be safe and secure. Which is why we have invested in technology and tools to protect our users from security threats, like spam, phishing scams and account hijacking. Even with these protections, if an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised.”
What Kricheli is trying to say is such accounts usually come with old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised or haven’t had two-factor authentication set up.
To remain active, the rules are simple. You can read or send an email, use Google Drive, watch a YouTube video, download an app from the Play Store or sign in to a third-party app or service with the Google account in question. Of course, we don’t do any of these with the burner account.
There is an exception to what makes it to the chopping board. There are musicians and artists who are no longer around but their accounts remain associated with important YouTube channels. These won’t be deleted. Earlier, in 2020, Google had said it would remove content stored in an inactive account, but not delete the account itself. This time, Google will remove an inactive account.