Earlier this year, Google announced that they would be deleting inactive Gmail accounts beginning in December. That deadline is officially upon us, and accounts that haven’t been active in two years will get completely wiped beginning the first of the month.
“Google products reserve the right to delete your data when your account has not been used within that product for two years,” reads the company’s Inactive Account Policy. “December 1, 2023, is the earliest a Google Account will be deleted due to this policy.”
In order to save an account from deletion, the account must be considered “active,” which means logging into the account to do anything from commenting on a YouTube video, reading (or sending) an email, or conducting a Google search. Exceptions to account deletion are accounts linked to a school or business, or accounts with an active gift card balance.
The following was originally published May 17, 2023:
In 2020 Google announced a new policy declaring that Google accounts that had been inactive for 2 years may have all their stored data wiped. Now, a new update from the company is warning that those inactive accounts may be deleted entirely.
Google says that activity is measured by doing something like watching a YouTube video, reading or sending an email, or updating a Drive. Since the “delete inactive accounts” policy won’t go live until December, users have time to salvage old accounts.
In the update, Google VP of Product Management Ruth Kricheli says that inactive accounts will be sent “multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion,” and the company will be using a “phased approach” that will begin with accounts that were set up and never touched. Though it is important to note that, according to 9to5Google, inactive accounts that get deleted will not be made available again.
See also: Google updating Drive with security features, spam filter
