Last Warning! Stop Your 'Inactive' Google Account From Being DELETED: Here's How

It’s unlikely that you haven’t used your Google account in a while, but if it is indeed the case, or if you have a secondary account that you don’t check often—be aware that Google will delete it on December 1, 2023, which is only a few days away at this point.

Yes, Google is going to start erasing inactive Google accounts, along with all the data associated with them—photos, Gmail, contacts, Drive storage, and so on.

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The important part here is that your account is considered ‘inactive’ if you haven’t used it in at least two years. So, if you’ve logged in recently, you’re all good. But if you’re reading this and can’t remember the last time you checked your account, you need to do one of the following things to make it ‘active’ again:

• Read or send an email from your Google account.
• Use Google Drive to upload or download content.
• Watch a video on YouTube from the same account.
• Share a photo via Google Photo.
• Download an app from the Play Store with your registered Google account.
• Upload a YouTube video.

Why Is Google Erasing ‘Inactive’ Accounts?

Google—in a policy change document from May this year—stated that it has “invested in technology and tools to protect our users from security threats, such as spam, phishing scams, and account hijacking,” but that if an account has not been used for a long period of time, it may become “compromised.”

Google further added: “This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven’t had two factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user. Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step-verification set up.”

Only ‘Personal’ Accounts Are Affected

To be clear, this policy change only applies to personal Google accounts. Accounts set up by educational institutions and official business accounts will not be deleted. Additionally, accounts with YouTube videos uploaded will not be affected.