Google has millions of users all around the world, it contains important information to assist the users. Recently as a part of its inactive account policies, Google has said that it plans to delete all personal accounts that have been inactive for two years or more starting this December.
The tech giant wrote in a blog post that this decision is a part of Google’s efforts to strengthen security measures and minimize risks for its users. In 2020, Google announced that it will be removing content from inactive accounts, but the decision to delete the account itself was announced on May 16.
“Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step verification set up. Meaning, these accounts are often vulnerable, and once an account is compromised, it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam,” the blog post read.
If an account is deleted all the contents stored in it will be removed, including Gmail messages, docs, Calendar events, Drive, and other Workspace files, as well as Google Photos backups. However, this decision only applies to personal Google accounts, and not to organisations like businesses and educational institutions.
The deletion of the accounts would not be sudden and would not come off as a surprise to the account holders said Google. “Before deleting an account, we will send multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion, to both the account email address and the recovery email (if one has been provided),” it added in the post.
It is to be noted that recently Twitter also announced the removal of accounts that have been inactive for several years.