Google is starting a major account deletion. You don’t want to lose yours? A few days left

Google already in July this year. announced that at the end of the year it will clear its servers of accounts that have not shown any activity for a long time. Mostly, accounts that the owners no longer remember about will be deleted. However, if you still have important emails or files on Gmail or Google Drive, it is worth making sure that the account is not lost.

Google will remove inactive accounts this week. There are a few exceptions

Inactive accounts will be deleted on December 1, i.e. this week. Google announced that it will get rid of accounts that the user has not logged in to for at least two years. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Google will “save” our account if:

• it is associated with an Android smartphone,
• it was used to activate a Google service or subscription and it is still active,
• it contains a gift card with a cash balance,
• there is an application or game with an active subscription or active financial transactions related to it.

In all other cases, you will have to say goodbye to all the contents of your account. Google will not only turn them off, but also empty the contents of the Gmail inbox and free the e-mail address, delete files from the Google Drive cloud, delete documents from the Documents, Sheets and Slides services, and get rid of videos and images (saved in the cloud) from the Photos application and clear the contents of the Calendar. However, Google will “spare” videos posted on YouTube even if the account associated with it is no longer active.

How to save your Google account? This will take a few minutes

Fortunately, saving your Google account is very simple and only takes a few minutes. All you need to do is log in to your account and perform any action – e.g. read or send an email on Gmail, use the Google search engine while logged in, watch something on YouTube or open a file from Drive before December 1. Google will then assume that the account is still active and will not delete it.

And why did the company decide to do a major “cleaning” of accounts? There are two reasons. First of all, the American giant claims that inactive accounts are easy prey for hackers who could take over the data contained in them. The second reason is, of course, the desire to free up space for data on your servers.