If you haven’t used one of your Google accounts in a while, you might want to do so this week. Inactive accounts will begin to disappear on December 1st.
Google announced in May that it would begin deleting accounts that had been inactive for two years and said the policy would begin in December.
That means anything stored in Gmail or other Google products like YouTube, Photos, Docs, Drive, Meet, and Calendar could be deleted.
Accounts are considered active if a user signs in and performs a series of actions, such as reading or sending an email, watching a YouTube video, or using Google search. The user must be logged into the account for the action to count.
The company said when it announced the policy that it was for security reasons: accounts that haven’t been used for a long time are more likely to be compromised. It also said that inactive accounts were 10 times less likely to have two-factor verification, which verifies a user’s identity.
The policy applies only to personal accounts, not those managed by a company or school.
Google said certain accounts would be exempt from deletion even if they were inactive for two years, including those that contained a gift card with a monetary balance or had an active paid subscription.
Although the company said it could begin purging accounts on December 1, it may not delete all of them immediately. Google said in May that it planned to start with accounts that had never been used.
If a Google account is deleted, all of its content and data may disappear. Before beginning the removal, Google said it would warn users in several emails to the inactive Google account and to another email if one had been saved to a user’s account.
An inactive account can be activated by signing in to a Google service, such as Gmail or YouTube.
Users must also sign in specifically to Google Photos, because the company policy states“If you are inactive on Google Photos for two years or more, all your content may be deleted.”