Ask HN: Why is Google closing old Google accounts? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is Google closing old Google accounts?

3 pointsaestetix3 comments

I think everyone has gotten messages like these lately:

"You're receiving this message because your Google Account has not been used in at least 8 months.

If you want to keep your Google Account, sign in to it before September 16, 2024. Take a moment now to sign in to your Google Account"

So my question is, why are they doing this? Is this a way for them to cut costs? Is there some new law they are trying to comply with? Or is there some security thing going on?

Normally I would assume it's for security, but this is happening regardless of what the passwords in the accounts are. Is this because there have been so many security breaches in websites? And if this were security related, why are they doing it now for the first time, after almost 20 years of Gmail?

I have some other suspicions, but I am already biased against Google, so I'd rather focus on facts rather than theories.

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They claim that it's for security reasons:

> unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven't had two factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user. Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step-verification set up. Meaning, these accounts are often vulnerable, and once an account is compromised, it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam.

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

This is undoubtedly spurious -- a secondary or tertiary consideration. The real reason is surely that they're looking to free up storage space and cut some costs. Spare a thought for the guy in prison who, upon his release, discovers his email account deleted, and all of his data lost.

Yup, IMO, they are chasing phone numbers and more personal information they can scrape.

I can't know for sure, but my thinking not oft used accounts, indicates accounts used for special or minor activities, and as such are the sort of accounts that generally have low numbers of emails -- their removal, very little will be gained if for storage issues, even if some people used the service as a place to back up personal photos and other data.

It was nice Google offered free web mails, and for a period of time, but I guess, like always, eventually they figured they wanted more profits.

Of course it's a pity to lose such services to the paranoia of 2FA (I'm told it'd take years to crack a 20 char password)... while some services such as google offered email as the second step for verification, in the end, typically the only viable methods reverts to phones and text messages. I have found the second email option doesn't work for google, (not surprised) - I guess their excuse might be, it's sort of anonymous (to marketing types and not to anyone who had access to certain tools) as well.

there are only handful of prisons where prisoners do not have access to the internet and if you are in one of those losing your email account will be the least of your worries :)

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