Twitter caused a buzz last week when Elon Musk announced that the social media platform would be purging (by archiving) accounts that have not been used for several years. 

Just a week later, Google  (GOOGL) – Get Free Report released an update to its own inactive account policies. 

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Citing the safety risks of old, unattended accounts, Google said May 16 that, starting in December 2023, it may begin deleting Google accounts that have been inactive for two years. 

Any content held on that account, from photos to documents to spreadsheets, will be lost. 

“We are going to roll this out slowly and carefully, with plenty of notice,” the update reads. 

Google will begin by deleting accounts that were created and never used again; before deleting an account, the company will send multiple notifications to the email address and to any listed recovery email. 

Schools and business organizations will not be impacted by the policy change. 

The only thing users have to do to keep their account from being deleted is to sign in once ever two years, so if you’re alarmed and thinking about all the old emails you’re about to lose, preventing this is pretty simple.

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