Google to delete inactive accounts starting December | Hacker News Reader

Google to delete inactive accounts starting December

reuters.com

41 pointsjmsflknr13 comments

There are a couple things i don’t like about this trend.

First, I have idle accounts for brand protection. I really dislike being forced to participate in the handle registration gold rush to begin with. Now I’ll have to set aside a day every few months to log in to all of them. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s annoying.

Second, if idle email accounts become available for re-registration it might expose some users to account takeovers if they own accounts with email addresses they’ve forgotten about. And, what about people forwarding from accounts they never log into directly? I wouldn’t consider those inactive. Does Google?

Has Google explicitly stated that re-registration of handles will be a thing? If so, that's incredibly dangerous.

I wouldn't consider accounts inactive if they're forwarding mail because there are deletions taking place, which is an active process, meaning you aren't clogging up that account's allocation.

The counter argument is hijacking: these accounts are more prone to be stolen and used for spam and impersonation.

You can auto-forward g-mail?

I have one (not Google) account that I never log into, but a robot pulls all the mail off it, it will show activity.

Yes, you definitely can just auto-forward (which I know as that is how I have any of mine set up).

Can't you set up a single email client to pull from all of your accounts? I imagine that would count as logging in and it would happen automatically.

> And, what about people forwarding from accounts they never log into directly?

I'm basically in this situation, which is why I have been paying for the annual plan. Despite the fact I passionately hate Google. Not sure when if ever I will be comfortable deleting my account entirely.

Primary source: https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/updating-our-...

Notably, this will also impact products such as YouTube and Google Drive. If you have any old YouTube videos you like watching, I would highly recommend downloading them before this change happens.

I feel like this ad from Google is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhPklt9nYas

8 years of work for nothing.

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("Dear Sophie" - about a Father using Gmail as a Diary to share with his Daughter someday)

Hope and Change didn’t work out for Google

Deleting accounts after 2 years inactivity is insane. Is this just data curation for ML? Google hurting for cash?

This is going to severely impact the overall youtube experience. There is so much great stuff from music to instructional videos that will just dissapear. So much rediscoved media will be lost to the sands of time. Extremely dissapointing. Tears in the rain :'(

It appears Google spared the MBAs while laying off engineers.

I used to have a blog on blogger that I posted to between 2010 and 2012. It was the only Google account I ever used. I stopped blogging after that. Never logged into Google either. The last time I tried logging into blogger was several years ago and, Google wanted me to associate a phone number with the account.

I abandoned the login for that reason and have never even been there since then.

If Google deletes that account, I don't care. I have backed up my posts.

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