The updated policy takes effect immediately, but the company said it won’t start deleting accounts until December. The company plans to send multiple warning notifications to users and purge inactive accounts in phases.
The first accounts will be those that were created and then never reviewed by the user. This measure will only affect personal accounts, leaving organizations like schools and businesses intact.
Google said its decision is based on internal findings that old accounts are more likely to rely on recycled passwords and less likely to employ updated security measures like two-step verification, making them much more vulnerable to problems like phishing. or hacking.
This decision goes beyond the policy published during the Covid-19 pandemic . In 2020, Google said that users would have their content removed from services they stopped using, but the accounts themselves would not be removed.
If you want to keep your account, you just have to log in to any Google service and interact on the platform for a few days.
