Just be aware that, if you haven’t logged in for some time to Gmail or Google Photos. With the urgent deadline of December 1, 2023.
As Google has confirmed that it will begin to delete accounts which have been inactive for too long.
Within a matter of weeks, some people will lose access to essential services and personal data. If they don’t log on to your Google account and verify its continued use, it won’t work.
Google will that particular account even it is the priority among an user.
An inactive Google Account is an account that has not been used within a 2-year period. Google reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data if you are inactive across Google for at least two years. Google releases this information in an article.
Google announced the new policy earlier this year and confirmed that it will begin to delete accounts in December 2023. It’s only a few weeks from now.
If you’re using Gmail, Documents, Calendar and Photographs regularly, this update will not be of any concern to you.
Note that Google’s going to send all of those affected an email in case you don’t get a message from the tech company, so your account will be safe.
“Before deleting an account, we will send multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion, to both the account email address and the recovery email (if one has been provided),” Google confirmed in a blog post.
The tech giant is targeting inactive old and inactive accounts. Because it’s a lot more likely that cyber criminals will be targeting them, which means all users in the web are much more at risk.
The account can be used for things like identity theft, or even unlawful content such as phishing and spam once the account has been breached.
“If an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised,” Google also reveals this information in its blog post.
The company furthermore added that, “This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven’t had two-factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user.”
According to Google, its own analysis has shown that inactive accounts are at least 10 times less likely than active accounts to have a 2-step verification set up.
This technology makes it even more difficult for hackers because they need to send a message to another device in order to access an account.
You can learn more about Google’s 2-step verification method and how to set up this from here.
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