Do you have any old Google accounts you haven’t used in a while? You might want to log in and take a look around once every 24 months or so, as Google has announced an update to its policies for inactive accounts. The old policy, laid out in 2020 at the same time it ended free unlimited storage for Google Photos, said that Google might wipe data stored in accounts that haven’t been touched for at least two years, but a blog post written by product manager Ruth Kricheli says that, now, those accounts could be deleted entirely.
The new policy won’t kick in until December of this year at the earliest, so you have some time to remember old login information or for us to get more details on how all of this will work. 9to5Google reports that the deleted Gmail addresses will not be made available for reuse.
