Delete Millions of GMAIL Accounts – How to Keep Your Accounts

This includes deleting all content associated with the account, which could be Drive files, Google Photos, and Docs.

In a blog post, Google’s Vice President of Product Management, Ruth Critchley, explained that this is a necessary security measure:

“If an account has not been used for a long time, it is more likely to be compromised. This is because forgotten or unmonitored accounts often rely on old or reused passwords that may have been compromised, do not have two-factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks from the user.

Our analysis shows that forgotten accounts are at least ten times less likely to set up 2-Step Verification than active accounts. This means that these accounts are often vulnerable, and once an account is compromised, it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vehicle for unwanted or even malicious content such as spam.

As of 2019, Gmail had 1.5 billion active users worldwide, and is one of the most popular email services. Because of this popularity and ease of account creation, scammers have been known to target Gmail users.

It also makes sense that Google would want to shut down inactive accounts to free up names and space, Bloomberg reports.

Google hasn’t released numbers on how many accounts have been flagged as inactive, but given the size of its user base, there may be a lot of free storage the company is funding for inactive accounts.

How to maintain your account

However, there are also users who will be excluded from deletion. An account can be saved from “disappearing” if it was used to purchase a Google product or subscription (such as to pay for additional storage space), or if it is an enterprise account. The new policy only applies to personal Google accounts.

The deletions begin on December 1, but they won’t all happen in one day. Google says it will take a “phased” approach starting with accounts that are created and never used again.

The company will also send warnings to the account email address, as well as the recovery address, before proceeding with deletion.

If you want to make sure your account doesn’t disappear, sign in to Gmail and Google will count it as activity. Signing in via Gmail to YouTube, Drive, or an app in the Play Store is an activity.