Google Announces Deletion of Unused Accounts from December 2023 for Security Measures

Google recently warned that starting from December, inactive accounts will be removed for security reasons. This will apply to accounts that have not been used for two years.

Currently, the number of active Gmail users stands at an astounding 1.8 billion people, with around 2 billion active users on Google Photos. The deletion of inactive accounts is primarily for security purposes. Google states that accounts that remain unused for extended periods are more likely to be compromised, especially if they rely on reused or outdated passwords, which poses a higher risk of compromise. Additionally, there is a minor concern that old, forgotten accounts are less likely to have two-factor authentication enabled.

If you haven't used or signed in to your Google account for a minimum of two years across all products, the content in your inactive personal Google accounts — Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar, and Google Photos — will be swept away during the cleanup in December 2023.

The company promises that the account and content deletion process will proceed "slowly and carefully, with plenty of notifications." The first targets will be those accounts that were created but never used.

To prevent the deletion of one of your inactive accounts, simply log in to your Google account and watch a video on YouTube or perform a search on Google. Doing so will be enough to prevent the removal of your Google account and protect the content you have stored in Gmail and Google Photos.