There is news, and it is not good! Google is planning to deactivate certain Gmail accounts in the next three weeks.
Many millions of Gmail users will lose their accounts in the near future. Google, as indicated in May, would begin taking action as early as December. The goal is to increase security since, according to a corporate study, accounts with little activity are more likely to be hacked and exploited for fraudulent purposes, such as malware distribution.
Accounts that have been dormant for longer than two years will be removed. In this regard, Google reserves the right to destroy the account and all associated content, including documents and files on Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar) and Google Photos.
This, however, will not occur without notification. In reality, Google has taken care to alert users of accounts that are in these conditions, providing them the option of recovering any content that may be preserved there. According to the business, inactive accounts are at least ten times less likely than active accounts to have two-factor authentication enabled. According to Google, implementing this security precaution considerably increases the challenge for hackers attempting to get illegal access.
So, if you don’t use your Google account on a regular basis but don’t want to lose it, there are a few actions you may take to keep it:
- Send an email using Gmail;
- Make use of Google Drive (to save or delete data);
- Download an app from the Google Play Store;
- Watch YouTube videos while logged in;
- Search Google when logged in;
- Sign in to a website using your Google Account.