Google has announced the start of deleting accounts in its ecosystem that have been inactive for at least two years. According to the tech giant’s management, such measures will help deal with some threats to user security.
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While the updated policy takes effect immediately, according to CNN, Google has said it won’t delete accounts until December of this year. The company plans to repeatedly send warnings to users and the removal process itself will be carried out gradually.
The new measures will initially affect accounts that have been created once and have never been visited by users again. It is also known that the policy will only apply to personal accounts, organizations – from schools to corporate structures – are not yet to be affected.
Google said the decision was based on internal research showing that older accounts are more likely to use insecure passwords that are also used in other profiles. In addition, such accounts rarely have additional security measures such as two-factor authentication enabled – they are therefore more vulnerable to the actions of intruders. The decision is a logical continuation of the old policy. As early as 2020, the company announced that it would delete the data from unused accounts, but the accounts themselves were not planned to be deleted at the time.
In order to save your account, you need to either log into the account itself or into one of Google’s services and possibly read an email, watch a video, do a search – demonstrate almost any activity.
Google has repeatedly changed the rules for working with accounts. A few years ago, for example, there was news that YouTube could simply abolish accounts that don’t make a profit.
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