Google—the world’s most famous search engine—has decided to delete millions of ‘Gmail’ accounts in December 2023 which were not used prolonged.

Ruth Critchley, a vice president of Google for product management said that unused accounts are being deleted to reduce the risk to user accounts.

Indian media reported that Google will delete millions of Gmail accounts in December that have not been used for two years.

Regarding the account deletion policy, Ruth Critchley further stated that inactive accounts will be deleted along with their content. That is, while deleting accounts that have not been signed in for 2 years, Gmail, Drive, Calendar and photos will also be deleted.

Explaining the reasons behind the move, he said inactive Google accounts often rely on old or reused passwords that lack two-way authentication and can be easily hacked.

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According to a survey conducted by Google, active accounts have 15 times more two-way verification than inactive accounts.

“Without two-way verification, accounts can be easily compromised and compromised,” says the vice president.

Which accounts can be deleted?

Google will delete accounts that have not been used for the past two years, but accounts used by organizations such as schools and businesses will not be deleted.

Accounts with at least one re-sign-in in two years will be considered active and will not be deleted. Also, accounts that have sent or read email, used Google Drive or uploaded videos during this period. Streaming platform YouTube videos will also be considered active if they have been watched.

Google has also said that accounts that have downloaded an application from the Google Play Store or used the Google search engine will also be counted as active accounts.