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It makes sense. Just have to use your rarely used accounts once in a blue moon or whenever to keep it active…if you care to keep them active.
 
Uncle Sam is collecting additional personal information by imposing two factor identification by arguing, as always, that it is for your security, well being of the planet, democracy, diversity, sustainability, etc. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So obvious.
 
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Reactions: wanha
Penny pinching strategy? It's Google, I doubt some of these accounts with only a few megabytes worth of data are really hurting their margins. This is irritating because I have multiple gmail accounts that I've used to buy different services and now I have to go through and log into each one to make sure Google don't nuke them.

There's a relatively easy workaround to this.

1. Download an email client other than the one you're normally using.
2. Sign into all these accounts.

And that's it - your email app will automatically check for new email, which means your accounts won't be idle.

All you need to do is set it up once.
 
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Reactions: davenet
I applaud Google for doing this purging. Services like Twitter have let usernames be stale for 10 years, and it's a disgrace when those usernames could be used by actual people or companies, not wasting space for nothing.
Even if Google delete the account, the email address still won't be usable. If Google allowed email address recycling it would allow people to get access to private information as not everyone will cancel all accounts linked to an old Google account.
 
Penny pinching strategy? It's Google, I doubt some of these accounts with only a few megabytes worth of data are really hurting their margins. This is irritating because I have multiple gmail accounts that I've used to buy different services and now I have to go through and log into each one to make sure Google don't nuke them.
Put it on your calendar once per year or maybe every 6 months. It is good practice to make sure accounts are accessed occasionally and that you have recovery plans in place in case you lose the password (if you aren't using a password manager like Keeper, etc).
 
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Reactions: zakarhino
I think this is fair. If you haven't touched a Gmail account in 2 years, why should they have to hold onto your data? Back it up to your own drives and keep it in multiple locations if you want it for archival purposes.
They are pissed by those who don’t continue to give them data to train their machines or perhaps to sell.
 
"At the moment, Google is not planning to delete accounts with YouTube videos"
I think they say that because they’ll start deleting blank account. Those made for logging in to a service and were never used anymore. But the plan is to delete youtube accounts as they say.
 
There's probably a lot of YouTube videos out there that are on accounts that have either been abandoned, or the person who owned them has passed away.

Are they really going to take down all that content, part of our history, basically, for nebulous security reasons?

Why not just lock out those accounts instead?

The more time passes the more I realize everything is ephemeral now. These next few generations aren't going to leave any tangible history behind. :(
 
I beat them to it! 🏁⏱🥇🏆.
I deleted my account back in 2011! 🎉🎉🎉🎉
(though, secretly, I‘ve wondered if they kept it hidden somewhere anyway, just because they can.)
I guess now we might know.

Still, I’ve read somewhere that they can monetize data for 18 months or so, so “2 years“ makes sense.
Why pay for storage on old data with no income potential?
 
Great, my deceased brothers youtube account will be deleted even though he still gets views from his 100+ videos. Some are over 12k views.
We can't log in because his Nokia phone number was discontinued and we don't know his email address or password.
Guess I'll have to download all his videos for family archive.
If I republish them after they take down his account will they flag me for duplicates?o_O

Just went back to view his channel and some videos are now over 50k views with ads. Ummm where is his ad revenue going?o_O
They won't delete it if there are youtube videos uploaded to it
 
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Reactions: JosephAW
I think this is fair. If you haven't touched a Gmail account in 2 years, why should they have to hold onto your data? Back it up to your own drives and keep it in multiple locations if you want it for archival purposes.
maybe your flight crashed and you're on an desert island, or maybe 7 years in tibet, or in jail....
 
I know we are all upstanding citizens but what if someone gets arrested for 2 years. When they come out of jail will they be locked out of all their accounts further hindering their re integration with society?
 
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Reactions: MacBH928
I thought Google thrives on data, more data the better. Those Google accounts must have lots of comments, emails, searches, chats to train their Claud AI or Braud or whatever its called
 
Does this mean i can finally create a new gmail with my name ? Or those deleted accounts aren’t ever available
 
So will they allow the accounts to be recreated if they are deleted? That would be a huge security hole since an attacker could recreate the account.
 
I applaud Google for doing this purging. Services like Twitter have let usernames be stale for 10 years, and it's a disgrace when those usernames could be used by actual people or companies, not wasting space for nothing.

That would be a bad idea. Unlike Twitter, email is used for account verification on other sites.
 
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