Google has changed its security policy and will start deleting accounts if a very specific requirement is not met. Which means that all content from the services associated with said account, as well as Gmail emails, photos stored in Google Photos, will be deleted without any consideration.
The company is carrying out maintenance and prevention work to strengthen user security and the first step will be to terminate accounts that have not registered at least one login in the last two years.
The measure will take effect in December this year and will not be sudden. Those who have exceeded the time limit will start receiving separate notifications to warn them of what is about to happen and will be forewarned.
How is it possible that the person not logged in to this account would have received these notices in the recovery email, if they had provided it in time, so that they could be notified by other means of the impending eviction.
The notices will start coming a few months before the closing.
Nor will it be as sudden and efficient as pressing a button and deleting all accounts in a day. Google has said that it will start gradually from December 2023. “We will take a phased approach, starting with accounts that were created and never used again.”
The change made in this new amendment is very important. Since, in the previous policy, it was stipulated that if a user maintained an inactive account for more than two years, he or she was at risk of losing the content of the email and not the account itself.
A Google Account is much more than a tool that lets you keep your search preferences or access your Gmail email. It is the gateway to the entire ecosystem of products and services of the American company.
Therefore, this measure—which will not affect accounts for organizations or educational institutions—will affect users of personal accounts in Google Workspace services, ie Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar; As well as YouTube and Google Photos.
Prevention and protection
Since this year, Google has invested heavily in “security technology and tools” to protect users from threats such as spam, ransomware, it said in a statement.
For this reason, he believes that if an account has not been used for a long period of time, it has a high chance of being compromised, as its owners may not have set up two-factor authentication.
After analyzing various cases, it concluded that abandoned accounts were “at least ten times less likely than active accounts to have configured two-step verification,” as can be read in this statement.
Far from being considered a reckless move, most online services have inactive account deletion policies, similar to the one Google just adopted.
To mention a few examples, Twitter notes, in the fine print, that users must log in at least once every 30 days to maintain their account. In case of WhatsApp, the period of inactivity of keeping the account should not exceed 120 days.
