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Comment by beeboobaa | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this move by google is incredilby irresponsible. Imagine the amount of people who used gmail to sign up for third party websites whose accounts can now be compromised via password reset.

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A googler told me that's approximately why — long-disused accounts were overrepresented among abused accounts. In particular he mentioned that accounts that hadn't been used in a long time were much more likely than the average to have a poor password.

To crack down on abuse, they try to force the affected users to become aware of their accounts.

This is also in the article.

do you imply that once google deletes an account, somebody else can sign up for that gmail account, and thus may gain access to 3rd party websites? I don't think google allows username recycling. once deleted, it remains unavailable.

> I don't think google allows username recycling. once deleted, it remains unavailable.

I was under the impression they would. If not what's the point?

Getting rid of accounts that can be used to attack you and that you'd forgotten that you had.

They want to close accounts with poor security (i.e. no 2FA enabled). These accounts has a higher risk of being compromised and used to get access to whatever they control

yeah, correct. although no one will be able to find (at least easily) that which account or accounts were closed.

Saving space and removing hassle of managing data that is not being used (and likely will never be used)? I think 18 months is way too little but I think the decision is valid

I have a google account that I use only for this purpose, I never really log on to it directly. I'm not even 100 percent certain of the password at this point. I guess I'll just make a new one.

the handles can't be reused.

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