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Google

Your Unused Gmail Account May Be Permanently Deleted Friday (wsj.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
Google will start to sweep away cobweb-collecting Gmail accounts this week. If you have an email address you haven't touched in a couple of years, it might soon be gone. From a report: The tech giant on Friday will start deleting personal Google accounts that have remained inactive for at least two years -- and going forward, it will continue killing accounts that reach two years of disuse. Once deleted, the accounts and any items in them can't be recovered. This could mean the end of personal emails, cherished documents and candid photos and videos tucked away in old Gmail accounts, Google Drives and other nooks in Google's servers.
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Your Unused Gmail Account May Be Permanently Deleted Friday More

Your Unused Gmail Account May Be Permanently Deleted Friday

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  • What did you expect? (Score:3)

    by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @12:09PM (#64043893)

    Nobody needs your stash of porn from 2003, Stormy Daniels is a grandma now.

  • What's considered use? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <`ten.kralctniop.tnenots' `ta' `tnenots'> on Thursday November 30, 2023 @12:19PM (#64043923) Journal
    I have several family members that only have a Gmail account because they need it for an Android phone or signing in to chrome to keep their favorites. However they've not ever used that e-mail for anything and use yahoo or something else instead.

    • Login once every 18 months and they'll be fine.

    • I have several family members that only have a Gmail account because they need it for an Android phone or signing in to chrome to keep their favorites. However they've not ever used that e-mail for anything and use yahoo or something else instead.

      Don't know that this will work to keep the account, but the only access I have on my Gmail account is it's set up in my mail clients to log in and check it. About there times a year I get nag mails from them asking me to provide a cell phone number, but other than that I don't think I've ever used it. I'd say toss it on as a secondary account on their email client and just let it sit in the background to see. Can't hurt anything.

    • Re:What's considered use? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @12:53PM (#64044023) Homepage Journal

      Google's help article isn't all that clear: https://support.google.com/acc... [google.com]

      However, if they have it on their Android device then they should get multiple warnings - emails, notifications, even SMS if they have a phone number on file.

    • My understanding is that those will be maintained. This is purely for accounts that have not been logged into at all for *years*.
    • I think that since Android requires an Gmail account that should include it to be active? I think your family members will be okay

    • If it's linked to your Android / Chrome instance you are in fact using the account.

    • You should be fine:

      "How Google defines activity
      A Google Account that is in use is considered active. Activity might include these actions you take when you sign in or while you’re signed in to your Google Account:

      Reading or sending an email
      Using Google Drive
      Watching a YouTube video
      Sharing a photo
      Downloading an app
      Using Google Search
      Using Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service"

      Basically the act of having your google account on an Android phone achieves the "Downloading an app" t

  • My Awesome Gmail Account (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @12:39PM (#64043963)

    (Complete tangent)

    I have a great gmail address. It's actually my first and last name (with a period between them, but gmail ignores periods). No numeric extension or weirdness. I got it during the invitation-only period way back in the day.

    But... I've discovered what others have also seen. If you have such an email, it's almost completely unusable. You get the email of other people routinely. I'm tracking the lives of at least three people. I know which lawyers they deal with, when they get their car serviced, what their flight itineraries look like... I know who they follow and how they vote. I know when they've had contractors work on their property, and what they had done. I know when their families meet for gatherings. I know when at least one went to an expensive rehab facility.

    john.smith2231@gmail.com becomes, through errors, john.smith@gmail.com - either because of uncertainty on the part of the sender, or laziness and lack of care on the part of the owner. It's easier to wave your hand at the email address you gave toyota if you don't care about an invoice arriving. Other people's traffic in this account is vastly heavier than my own. In fact, I can't use it for anything else. It's flooded with opt-in and more appears daily.

    So I might let it die and have it garbage collected by Google. That's a shame...

    • i have the same first.last@gmail.com as yourself and a one with first two initials with last name. I've never gotten a single email in the 18 years or so I've had them meant for another person with my name. And I know there are 3-4 people with my exact name, including one with the same middle initial, working in the same industry or field. Never seen it happen to a family member or friend, either.

      • Because of this article I just logged into the gmail account associated with the Google account that I use for YouTube. I don't use that email address for pretty much anything at all, except if there's some action I need to take on a couple of rarely updated YouTube channels that I have.

        Lo and behold, I had an email from a recruiter sent to that address recently. Again, I never use that email address for anything, personal or work related. So I've certainly never provided that address on LinkedIn, or used i

      • I have this happen all the time. I have first initial and full last name and get all emails for anyone whose name starts with d and ends with broome

    • yea.. I have a 5 character account that is both a common first name, and last name. I still use it and Gmail has gotten fairly good at filtering out completely useless crap but its a lot more work than just using an email on a private domain for sure. I do love it though when trying to give people an email address they can remember: "Its just at gmail.com." The look of bewilderment is always fun. =)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        I have a 7 character account that don't start with a common name so I have yet to see a mail intended for someone else. I have had it for many years now.

        Since 2015 there are 5 mails in my junk mail bin managed by Thunderbird.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by svr0002 ( 536813 )

      Me too. I must know every s*** r*** on the planet by now, including the one in Australia who is checking out assisted living communities . If it looks like an important email from a real human I'll let them know they have the wrong address if I feel public spirited.

    • I was also lucky early days to have an invite and grabbed a 5 letters common word, let's say "angel@gmail.com", you cannot believe the number of stuff I receive from around the world... Spain, UAE, Australia, China, etc during those years... lastly it's mostly cellphone contracts. I ignore those emails, but sometimes I reset password and close account. One of the most annoying one I remember was from dentist appointment system in Florida or California, it was spammy a lot.

      • I was also lucky early days to have an invite

        I rememember buying an invite on ebay for 99 cents :)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          I was also lucky early days to have an invite

          I rememember buying an invite on ebay for 99 cents :)

          How any bitcoins was that, about 3? ;-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Me too, and I have a common name. It's very entertaining. For years some woman's security system told me her address, when she came and went and when she went to bed and woke up. I tried to tell Nancy, but the messages came from a do not reply account and e-mailing the company got no response.

      Then there was the time some shady real estate development company shared their dropbox with me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dan667 ( 564390 )
      I had an acquaintance that had a common first.last@gmail.com account and there were several people that used it as their spam account. He started canceling appts and messing with whatever they were doing and it magically stopped. Not sure I would do that, but they were in different countries so he was not too worried about any blow back.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by frankjr ( 591955 )
      The first gmail account I ever created during the invitation-only period was frankjr@gmail.com. Not even google's spam filters can filter out the sheer amount of garbage that gets sent to it. People assume it exists and it gets spammed to. Had to switch over to something people wouldn't automatically assume exists and only ever peep into that account once every couple of years.

    • I used to get email for someone else, but itt's not gmail though. I think either he intentionally gives wrong email out when an email address is required, or he is just goofing up badly. It just happens. Gmail just happens to be used by a lot of people so it probably crops up more.

      Gmail probably gets immense loads of spam. So many spammers just try variations of names.

  • I made a small, emailing, hardware device to monitor failures in the field, long ago. To my chagrin, my boss insisted on using free email providers with it, such as Gmail--I knew this would be trouble. Sure enough, we eventually learned that if there were no problems at a particular site for 9 months (no emails sent), that device's Gmail account would be suspended (not 2 years as in TFS), and it would no longer function. What a pain that was; not to mention the other perpetual changes Gmail would force u

  • In control (Score:3)

    by Aethedor ( 973725 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @12:46PM (#64043979)
    This is exactly why I run my own server with services that are important to me. I want to be in control. Of course, it is understandable for accounts that haven't been used in years, but the issue is that THEY chose what to do with it. My data, my decision.

    • Honestly, it's a hassle running and securing an email and web server, but it is really the only way to retain some kind of control.

      This is relative control, as I'm hosted on a large provider's infrastructure, which is the only relatively cost-effective way to maintain email sender reputation.

      I can create new fake email addresses on the fly for businesses I want to explore, then nuke all incoming email for that address whenever I want.

      I can stop the flow of spam and phishing in whatever way I deem fit, with

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dskoll ( 99328 )

        I run my own email too. It's not that hard... just make sure you pick a reputable hosting provide to ensure the IP has a decent (or at least neutral) reputation. Set up SPF and DKIM according to best practices and you should be OK. The initial setup took me a few hours total, I guess, but I haven't touched it in years.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by laktech ( 998064 )
        Honestly, it's not that hard. For years I've been listening to this narrative and finally decided to try it for myself. Glad I did, because what YOU find hard I find easy. You're projecting your inadequacies. I always forget this. To folks out there, try setting up your own mail server. Try setting up your own http server. Learn the protocols and the challenges of getting it online. Ask AWS to open the outgoing SMTP on your account. And if you fail, take ownership of that. It was too hard for _you_ and ex
        • You're projecting your inadequacies.

          No. Different people have different geek specialties, and not all of us are good at setting up servers, just as not all of us are skilled at network security or encryption. I've known and worked with people who were very good at troubleshooting network connectivity issues but couldn't set up an email account without at least three tries, even with an accurate cheat sheet. It happens, and calling somebody inadequate because they can't wrap their mind around one or an

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jddj ( 1085169 )

            Well, perhaps this, or in my experience, there are a lot of choices of mailers, a lot of choices of mailbox front-ends, a lot of choices of webmail, and they all have different docs.

            In addition, there are multiple choices of setups for these emailers (one example: simple email accounts set up in files, vs. mysql backend).

            Then there are personal choices like mariadb vs. mysql - and perhaps in someone's online recipe they use everything you want except mariadb, or they're using a few versions earlier than cur

  • Definition of inactive (Score:5, Informative)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @12:51PM (#64044007) Homepage

    Important: It doesn't look like logging in is sufficient. [google.com]

    According to the linked info, you probably ought to send or receive an email, just to be safe...

    • I just tried to log into two old accounts, and whoops! they were already swept under the rug.

      • I couldn't log in to my old Google accounts because they now require adding a phone number even for accounts created without one. I'm not giving them that - I'd rather just loose the account. I only used it for Google Talk (XMPP), and they screwed that up so I couldn't use it any more close to a decade ago.

    • Log in? I never log out so I never need to log in - does that count as inactive?
    • Then again, maybe logging in is sufficient:

      How to check your activity status

      If you're not sure whether your Google Account is inactive, sign in to your Google Account.

  • Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @12:51PM (#64044015)

    you're not enough of a customer for us. Buh-bye.

  • My internet activity from 2004 shouldn't be relevant in 2024. Old emails and media will just be taken out of context anyway, seeing how many people get "cancelled" these days. Google giving the chance to let sleeping dogs lie is a good thing.
    • For starters, If you have old emails from 2004 sitting on Gmail, that's your screw up to fix not Google's.

      Second of all, what makes you think that Google will actually delete those emails so Google itself cannot access them? Sure Google will be glad to "delete" the data so you can't see it in the UI, but from their treasure trove of storage (probably in the USA where laws like GDPR have no hope of forcing compliance)? Hell no. That data from 2004 will be bought and sold on the info broker market and there

  • Self-hosting a read-only server? (Score:3)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @01:24PM (#64044141)
    I've heard many horror stories about self-hosting email, mainly how difficult it is not to have everything you send marked as spam or how many intrusion attempts you get from doing it. But the former at least seem to be centered around sending email versus receiving it.

    The main reason I have multiple emails is for different website types and sign-ups. It seems like a self-hosted read-only email server wouldn't be too difficult to get running and being marked as spam would be a non-issue. Then I could just have one or two Gmail accounts specifically for sending. Has anyone gone this route? How hard is it to secure a setup like this against intrusion? I wouldn't want to make my home network a target.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Malc ( 1751 )

      Or just delegate to somebody like Fastmail for $5/month or Proton Mail? Although I do wonder whether mail service provider email aliases are less popular these days now that Apple has the "hide my email" feature feature integrated in to all of their OSes, browsers and other applications.

    • I run my own mail server that serves a few domains. I use postfix (MTA, SMTP), Dovecot (MDA, IMAP, POP3), Horde (web mail, contacts, calendars), OpenDKIM, spfmilter, SpamAssassin and BIND. MariaDB hosts the databases for both mail authentication and all the stuff Horde wants. I use Dovecot's replication over SSH to keep a live remote backup of the mailboxes.

      Key things to keep in mind:

      • You'll have no luck with a static residential IP address. You'll be blacklisted everywhere. Get a cheap VPS at least.

  • I would guess that these are mostly spam accounts that were used briefly to send large amounts of spam emails then abandoned.

    • I would guess that these are mostly spam accounts that were used briefly to send large amounts of spam emails then abandoned.

      Accounts parents created for kids to register them for something. Been there, done that. Kids given control of accounts at 18 and never used. Hope accounts aren't used on bank accounts.

  • My Use (Score:3)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @02:02PM (#64044261) Homepage
    My gmail use has changed to I only use it only on my android phone. How d I use it ? 1. Select all. 2. delete all. I use it to sites that need an email, but I never read what go to gmail
  • I can't log into my Gmail account, even with the right password. It is linked to my Google Project Fi phone. The phone is out of service and can only be reactivated in the US. Does anyone have the legal department information of Google? My aunt is a lawyer and may be able to prevent this.

    • You can send a subpoena to any google office. Most would send it to their HQ to guarantee it gets addressed, but for some they would send the subpoena to a rarely used satellite office in hopes the document never makes it to legal and you get a default judgement (I know someone who sued a Fortune 500 and sent the notice to an understaffed mall outlet location and they never responded)

      Your aunt who is a lawyer should already know this. She is a lawyer, right?

  • Nothing I can do about it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @02:28PM (#64044311)
    I have had no way of recovering it for over 2 years.
  • How long until we see an article on how scammers were able to hijack accounts (e.g., bank account) because an expired gmail address was taken over by the scammer?

  • Google Voice (Score:3)

    by Chelloveck ( 14643 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @03:19PM (#64044473)

    They're doing the same thing with Google Voice numbers. I get email every couple of months telling me I need to place calls with it or they'll take it away from me. So, I log in, make one phone call, and forget it until the next email. Damn it, Google, I use this number for *incoming* calls. There's no real reason why I'd ever use it for placing calls without your constant threats.

    Seems like Google is trying to make every service that doesn't directly make them cash just as miserable to use as possible to drive existing users away.

    • Seems like Google is trying to make every service that doesn't directly make them cash just as miserable to use as possible to drive existing users away.

      Yep. This all began when they took down their big sign that said "don't be evil." I have no idea why anyone trusts these pricks with anything in 2023.


  • If you're not paying for the service, you are the product, not the customer.

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