Google on Tuesday, May 16, announced its intention to delete accounts whose activity has not been recorded for two years.
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Currently, several billion users are registered in the system of accounts of this technology giant. The decision to delete personal data repositories whose owners have been inactive for two years or more is part of an effort to increase the security level of the extensive user community base. The relevant information is contained in the message of the technology giant, which was published in connection with the planned actions against inactive accounts.
Back in December last year, a publication was posted on Google’s blog about the possibility of introducing the practice of deleting accounts in the case that for two years had not received access to any of the services of the tech giant. As part of these actions, the company will also delete the content saved by the users in Google Workspace, YouTube, and Google Photos.
The tech giant announced that it will be sending notifications to owners of inactive accounts for several months. Only after that, the procedure for deleting the personal data store will be started. The company said that this practice will not be extended to business accounts and those accounts that are used by schools.
The criteria for determining an account as active are very simple. To maintain the appropriate status, it is enough to perform actions such as reading or sending emails, using Google Drive, watching videos on YouTube, downloading an application from the Google Play store, logging into a third-party application or service using a Google account or performing a search while logging in.
The tech giant reports on the need to eliminate security problems associated with inactive accounts. The company’s internal analysis indicates that abandoned accounts are at least 10 times less likely to pass a two-step verification than active ones. Once the virtual storage of a user who does not perform any actions is compromised, it can be used for any purpose, including stealing personal information and distributing malicious content.
Google did not specify what solutions will be implemented concerning the user names of inactive accounts after they are deleted.
Last week, Elon Musk announced plans to delete abandoned accounts and recycle Twitter usernames.
As we have reported earlier, Google Adds Passkeys as Option for Accounts.
