Inactive Google Account Policy
A Google Account gives you Google-wide access to most Google products, such as Google Ads, Gmail, and YouTube, using the same username and password.
An inactive Google Account is an account that has not been used within a 2-year period. Google reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data if you are inactive across Google for at least two years.
Google also reserves the right to delete data in a product if you are inactive in that product for at least two years. This is determined based on each product’s inactivity policies.
How Google defines activity
A Google Account that is in use is considered active. Activity might include these actions you take when you sign in or while you’re signed in to your Google Account:
- Reading or sending an email
- Using Google Drive
- Watching a YouTube video
- Sharing a photo
- Downloading an app
- Using Google Search
- Using Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service
Google Account activity is demonstrated by account and not by device. You can take actions on any surface where you’re signed in to your Google Account, for example, on your phone.
If you have more than one Google Account set up on your device, you’ll want to make sure each account is used within a 2-year period.
What happens when your Google Account is inactive
When your Google Account has not been used within a 2-year period, your Google Account, that is then deemed inactive, and all of its content and data may be deleted. Before this happens, Google will give you an opportunity to take an action in your account by:
- Sending email notifications to your Google Account
- Sending notifications to your recovery email, if any exists
Google products reserve the right to delete your data when your account has not been used within that product for a 2-year period.
December 1, 2023 is the earliest a Google Account will be deleted due to this policy.
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I know this sounds dumb probably but 2 years is too short a time. Considering how email is basically the backbone of the Internet deleting old accounts after 2 years sounds nightmarish. People will be forever locked out of things. I even have like 6 Gmail accounts I use for different things. Like I’m going to have to login and rotate through them every now and again just to be sure.
Needs to be like five years or something considering they were presumably eternity before. You can still use Hotmail accounts.
If they recycle the email address so other people can use them that’s a whole other bag of worms. Like people.will find old email lists and try recreating them and seeing what they can get into. Expect your dead grandma to be suddenly posting on Facebook soon about great opportunities.
I get like emptying data out. Sure delete all their drive files and emails after 2 years but the account itself should never be.
I even have like 6 Gmail accounts I use for different things.
It’s not a perfect solution, but you can use services like AnonAddy which allows you to make a bunch of aliases for free to use on different sites and services, or you can also do something like youremail+service@gmail.com so you can have “separate” email addresses coming into your one singular email.
I think they commented they won’t be removing accounts with uploaded (and monetizable, by Google) videos on YouTube… so that could be a way to lock in the name against opportunists.
They still might delete all the data from other products, though.
I know this sounds dumb probably but 2 years is too short a time.
No no, I’m of the same opinion
welp there goes all my alts I’ve forgotten over the years, RIP
Welp, there goes all of my childhood videos and memories from over a decade or so ago. Google, how do you expect people to remember passwords from 15 years ago?
It’s a good thing that yt-dlp supports full channel downloads. But this is horrible for old content, probably even worse than the time they privated old unlisted videos. What if someone is dead? What about people in comas?
They will be sparing google accounts with youtube videos uploaded by them as someone else mentioned BUT images/videos on google drive on the other hand…
Edit: oh, the person that mentioned it did it in my other post on the topic lol, there’s that person’s message:
YouTube’s creator liaison, Rene Ritchie, clarified on Twitter that Google has “no plans to delete accounts with YT videos.” https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/05/googles-new-inactive-account-policy-wont-delete-years-of-youtube-videos/
inb4 they back out of that statement and delete it
Wait, so this is confirmed or is it just your assumption?
It’s a bet. I’m sure they’ll do it at some point.
Prolly
Don’t threaten me with a good time, google! :P
We all know they won’t be deleting anything. Just putting it in their giant archive.
