According to Neowin , with the announcement earlier this week, Google said that starting later this year, if a Google account is not used or signed in for at least 2 years, the company may delete that account and its content, including content in Workspace, YouTube, and Photos.
Google accounts with YouTube videos are temporarily safe even if they haven't logged in for 2 years
What's notable about the announcement is the mention of deleting Google accounts with YouTube videos, which has many people worried, because there may be popular YouTube videos uploaded by a deceased person that will be deleted. For this reason, Google has quietly revised the announcement by removing "YouTube" from the policy and adding the line "Additionally, we have no plans to delete accounts with YouTube videos at this time." So if you haven't logged into your Google account in a while and have uploaded some YouTube videos through that account, you can rest easy for now.
As mentioned earlier, Google is making this move to delete unused or inactive accounts for security purposes. There are concerns that older, unused accounts may have passwords that have been compromised, and that those older accounts may not have additional security measures in place to protect them, such as two-factor authentication.
The company plans to start deleting Google accounts in December 2023, starting with accounts that were set up but never actually used. The company said it will send notices to account owners several months before deletion, including the account email and a recovery email address if available.
To keep a Google account active, all a user has to do is log in to that account and use it for simple activities like reading or sending emails, using that account with Google's search engine, or watching videos on YouTube.
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