Google is about to start axing personal accounts that have been just sitting there gathering digital dust for two years. If you've got an old Gmail or Google account you haven't touched in a while, you'll want to log in pronto before it gets erased. This means any related services connected to them like Google Docs, Drive, Calendar, and Photos will bite the dust too. When is Google deleting accounts? The plan to erase unused profiles was announced in May, with the deletions scheduled to begin this December, starting with accounts created but never actually used. Before an account gets removed, Google says it'll send multiple warnings over several months leading up to the deletion date, through both the registered email address itself and any recovery email provided. How to keep Google from deleting your account? Basically, log in at least once every two years – any account or connected service that has seen recent activity is considered active and gets to stick around. Reading or sending email, using Drive or YouTube, downloading an Android app, web searches, signing into a linked third-party app, or even having a paid subscription like Google One or a news site through your account all count. Google also offers an Inactive Account Manager that lets you decide what happens to your account and files if there's no activity for 18 months, like auto-forwarding stuff to a trusted account, setting an auto-reply, or deleting everything right away. But perhaps the best hack is uploading a video on YouTube to keep your account from getting deleted even if it’s unused. Such accounts are apparently safe for now too. Why has Google decided to purge accounts? According to the official company blog post back in May, it's an effort to keep users safe from hackers – accounts that are forgotten about tend to use old or recycled passwords which may have already been compromised, don't have two-factor authentication setup, and rarely get security checks from the actual owner. An internal Google analysis showed abandoned accounts are at least 10 times less likely to have that extra login protection enabled compared to actively used ones, making them prime targets for identity theft, sending spam, and other unpleasant misuses. This digital housekeeping only applies to personal accounts by the way, not ones belonging to organisations like schools or businesses.
