Since your email address was also a part of getting into your bank account, now you've got a problem of getting your money, too.

There must be a billion ways to implement account deletion without this happening. The first one that comes to mind is giving the user 6 months of email-only access (so they can move to a webmail provider who will tolerate them).

At any rate, the root cause is that Gmail, the world's largest webmail service, is affiliated with the world's largest search engine and the world's largest repository of video. Never mind this essay about social media, the connection between these three services is a ridiculous, dangerous thing.