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If you have a Gmail email account that you don’t pay much attention to, be careful because it is possible that you could soon lose access to it.
Google has announced that will begin deleting accounts that are considered inactive starting next December 1st. For the company, an inactive account is one that has not recorded any activity during the last two years.
If in the last two years the owner of the Google account has not taken any action, even if it is only accessing the service, reading or sending an email, accessing Google Drive or even watching a YouTube video while registered, Google will consider the account inactivates and will begin to remove services or content that are not being used.
This affects Gmail, but also the rest of Google services: Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Calendar… All the information contained in these services will be deleted if no activity is recorded in them. Of course, the deletion will only be carried out on personal accounts, not on those that are company accounts or linked to an educational organization or institution.
There will also be some exceptions. For example, if the account was used to make purchases in the Google Play Store it will not be deactivated. Nor if you have a gift card with a positive balance on it.
In its terms of use, Google expressly states that it “reserves the right” to delete the content of accounts that are considered inactive. It does not mean that it will do so in all cases, but it does explicitly state that no account will be deleted before December 1st. Just in case, to avoid losing any content, it is recommended to periodically access your Google account.
In any case, before deleting any content, Google will send the account owner an email notifying them of the situation and will allow them to access the service to “reactivate” their account so that they do not lose any content stored in it.
