Google has commenced its plan to delete inactive Gmail accounts, sending warning messages to those that may be affected.
Toward the end of 2023, the company revealed that it would be deleting Gmail accounts that hadn’t been used in more than two years.
For an account to be considered inactive, users must not have been logged into it via any of Google’s services like Gmail or Google Photos.
VP of Product Management at Google Ruth Kricheli explained last year, “If an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised.”
She went on to explain that these measures are necessary to ‘protect our users from security threats like spam, phishing scams, and account hijacking.’
Internal analysis by Google found that old accounts are far more likely to be compromised due to having out-of-date or re-used passwords and are ten times less likely to have two-factor authentication set up.
“These accounts are often vulnerable, and once an account is compromised, it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content like spam,” Kricheli noted.
Google is sending warning emails to users before the deletion of their accounts takes place.
A reporter for Forbes, Davey Winder, shared that he received a warning message in January this year that a Google account he had not used in eight months was going to be deleted on September 20 if he didn’t take action.
While Google and Gmail have been asking users to check old accounts to see if they received a similar warning, they should not be a huge cause for concern if you want to keep your account as there are three simple steps you can take to keep it active.