What times those when you created accounts everywhere (and you also did it with names that would make you angry, I look at you, Eva from the past and your ‘aupaathletic’, ‘arwen85’) and personally, how few have arrived operational to this day: personal, work and another to subscribe to websites. What happened to the others? They navigate aimlessly in the sea of the Internet, but Google’s days are probably numbered: those from Mountain View have announced that inactive Google accounts have their days numbered. If you have a Google account that you use from time to time but don’t want to lose, here’s what you’ll need to do.
Google’s plan. Those who have not logged into Google services in two years will lose their Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Docs, Meet or Photos files and their respective accounts. For Google, this is a security measure, since an inactive account is less likely to have two-step verification enabled. And at Google we save everything: from registration processes to social networks and other personal platforms and services. Google will start executing it in December of this year and it will be progressive: first those that were created and never used and then the rest of the free accounts, prior to sending various notices.
How to prevent Google from deleting my account
The first and easiest solution is to simply enter your email once every two years: just read or send an email to get rid of this sieve. But you may not be clear about which Gmail accounts you have created throughout your life.
Although there is no foolproof way to know the number of Google accounts created (and the truth is, if you don’t even remember the address, it’s a good indication that you don’t use it and that it’s probably dispensable), but you can resort to https://accounts.google.com/signin/usernamerecovery. Of course, as long as you know the name and surname that you have used (be careful with using false names), as well as the telephone number or recovery email. You don’t even need “so much”: if you enter and search there in the search engine it will be enough.
Google takes other tools hand in hand, such as Google Drive and its office suite, so if you want your account to stay alive, all you have to do is access your cloud service and make use of.
Google is much more than Gmail, so there are platforms like YouTube that can prevent them from deleting the account: It is enough that, within your account, you watch a YouTube video. In the event that you create content and have at least one video uploaded from that account, the deletion will no longer be applied (for now).
Google is providential within the Android ecosystem, so if you have a device with said operating system, it will be enough to download an app from the Google Play Store from that account.
If you have an existing subscription set up through that Google account, it can be Google One or an app, this will also count as activity and your account will not be deleted. If you’ve ever used that Google account to create an account from it on another service, and you use that service frequently, then it won’t be deleted use third-party Google sign-in.
If Google deletes your account, this is what you will lose
- All your photos and videos saved in Photos. Among the great assets of this tool is that it automatically backs up your photos and videos and that Google has implemented new features over the years to improve its organization. But if Photos is the only place where you keep certain photos, for example those from an old phone with an old Google account that you no longer use, you risk losing them. If this is your case, log in and also download the content.
- Shared files available from Drive. You can also run out of files whose only copy is stored in an old Drive. Keep in mind that since it’s possible to share Drive files with non-Gmail accounts, you might have access (so far) through another path, but if Google deletes that unused account, you’ll lose it. A good idea is to download it and upload it to your own current Google account.
- Access to other accounts and services. In the single sign-on era where some services rely on a Google account to get you in, this can be dramatic. Think that for example you are subscribed to your Spotify account with an old Google account and it is closed, then you will not be able to recover the Spotify login because you do not have access to the recovery email.
- You will not be able to send emails to a deleted account. The normal thing is to use our active account to send and receive emails, but some emails are automatically forwarded to other accounts, perhaps because, for example, when changing accounts you avoided notifying the rest and simply redirected, as a copy or for other reasons. In that case, the sender will receive a “550 error”
Home | Photo by Solen Feyissa
Source | google blog
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