Consider this your final warning: Google will begin deleting million of Gmail accounts beginning on Dec. 1, 2023. (That’s three days from now!) The great purge is aimed at Gmail accounts that have been inactive for two years, and will erase all data—Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, and Calendar—from those accounts. If you don’t want that to happen to you, here’s how to save your data.
Before you worry unnecessarily, this doesn’t apply to all inactive Gmail accounts, just personal ones. Work and school Gmails are safe, as are any accounts with YouTube videos attached to them. Your personal Gmail won’t be deleted if there has been any activity on it in the last two years, including any active subscriptions.
Back in March, Google announced it was going to nuke accounts because older accounts pose a greater security risk. In a blog post in May, the company added that abandoned accounts are “at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step-verification set up,” and those vulnerable accounts can be compromised and used for “anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam.”
Google promises it will warn users of impending deletions by sending emails to both the original account and any recovery addresses attached to it. Google will be deleting Gmail accounts in batches, beginning with those that were created and never used.
How to keep Google from deleting your old Gmail account
It’s easy to prevent Google from deleting your old gmail account: Just log into it and do something. That something can include:
Reading or sending an email
Using Google Drive
Watching a YouTube video
Downloading an app on the Google Play Store
Using Google Search
Using “Sign in with Google” to sign in to a third-party app or service
While you’re at it, update your Gmail security settings
While you’re logging in to save your old Gmail account, you might as well take a few minutes and update your security settings. Here’s how to make sure your Gmail is as secure as possible.
Log into your gmail account.
This will let you set up a recovery phone number or email address, turn on 2-step verification, enable Google Prompts, and check other security settings.
How to back up the data on your Gmail account
Credit: Stephen Johnson/Google
If you want to create a copy of anything on your Gmail account and be free of any future threats of account deletion, you should also take advantage of Google Takeout. Takeout lets you download your Google data or transfer it to another device. Here’s how to use it:
Navigate to takeout.google.com.
By default, everything is selected. If you’d like to pick and choose what to transfer, click “Deselect All”
Scroll down and choose which items you’d like to transfer/download.
Choose either “Export once” or “Export every 2 months for 1 year.”
Scroll down and click “next step.”
Choose whether Google should create a link to an archive of your requested data and email it to you, or transfer it to Dropbox, OneDrive, or another service.
Specify whether you’d like a .zip file or a .tgz file.
Hit “create export.”
When the archiving is finished, you’ll either receive a link to your data.
