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Tell HN: Google will delete inactive accounts
Bad news for me, I have lots of accounts I set up with forwarding back in the way, as a way to keep control of spam. I want to keep those accounts as they’re important to me even though I didn’t sign into them.
So I was bummed to receive this message about deletion of “inactive” accounts:
https://pastebin.com/fgLUN45V
It makes me sad as I consider all my accounts active.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoNews from 2 months ago Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35963093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35963093
- r_singh 3y agoI guess one thing I like like about this new net is that many free accounts isn’t a normal expectation. I hope it remains this way even when interest rates eventually fall. Isn’t this good because it lowers the barrier of entering businesses like email a little at least? Anyhow I really hope the percentage of people who realise that paying for software is important increases. What I mean by new net is this phenomenon of needing a cloud account and being tracked to use pretty much all end user software applications and also an increasing number of developer tools (e.g. font awesome). Imagine if every service on the web became paid, it’d be kinda nice and maybe some of our side projects finally become viable haan?
- Spooky23 3y agoI doubt it’s helping new market entrants. Folks who collect gmail accounts have the opportunity to pay as well.
- helph67 3y agoSure they will delete inactive accounts but they will continue to track you, regardless! https://www.techradar.com/news/nearly-half-of-all-online-trackers-are-from-google https://www.techradar.com/news/nearly-half-of-all-online-tra...
- kccqzy 3y agoWhy does it mean that these accounts are important to you but you don't sign in? I suppose perhaps there are sentimental reasons but in that case you might as well do a takeout, download everything, and enjoy whatever is in your account locally. On the other hand it's extremely easy to satisfy this sign-in requirement. Just set up a mail client that fetches Gmail over IMAP; you don't even have to read any emails.
- simplyaccont 3y ago"It looks like someone else might be trying to access your Google Account. For your protection, you can’t sign in right now." Been like this for past year or so, on every login attempt. Good that I never actually used gmail for my real email. Only for some random junk
- mdhen 3y agoI can recommend simplelogin if you need new spam sign-up emails. Comes bundled with proton mail.
- amf12 3y ago"The simplest way to keep a Google Account active is to sign in to the account at least once every two years." Not a terrible requirement. If they are so important to you, why can't you login once every 2 years. Why is it bad news?
- tadfisher 3y agoI was forwarding Google Voice SMS messages from a second account so I could remain in contact with old friends (I ported my number I've had since high school). The only reason I had to create a second account was because I switched to Google Fi, which forbids your main account from also having a Google Voice account. Apparently actively using this service does not count as an "active login", because that account was disabled and my number was given to someone else. I only found out when a friend showed me screenshots of my number texting them "who is this?", despite having my main email and phone number as backups for the second account. I cannot get that number back, and support was no help.
- devoutsalsa 3y agoJust so you know, you can now have Fi and Voice on the same account. Historically what you saying true, but it changed a couple years back. Source: I had Voice and Fi on the same account.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoAre people in prison allowed to sign into their Google accounts? I imagine they wouldn't be able to bring 2FA or even a list of backup PWs with them (unless memorized in advance)
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoBeen talked about a bunch previously since it was announced
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoUpdating our inactive account policies 2 months ago, 231 points, 210 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35966318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35966318
- 0xedd 3y agoThe amount of corpo brainwash in the comments is amazing: "If it's so important... jump through a hoop... and another... and another". Fact remains - Google is unique in its constraint. It gives no added value over competitors. Why accept?
- chaoz_ 3y agoResearching other options will take some time + the deliverability/spam-detection will only get worse. You can check e-mail price of "@gmail" on darkweb and compare it against other providers. For them it's a "threshold" to balance security on scale and they're doing a pretty good job imo.
- paddim8 3y agoBecause it's still perfectly reasonable. You simply cannot keep data forever. At some point you have to start removing old unused data. It is just not sustainable. I don't agree with complaining about every single thing corporations do just because they're corporations. Let's complain when they do actually unreasonable things.
- garyNeedsa 3y agoDownvotes are weird; reality is not a fractal. Humans die; is the future on the hook for fiat and resource costs to store our cat photos? Religion and longtermer philosophy get thought and agency policing really fast. It’s funny it’s often political traditionalists who seek preservation but refuse to point out the established socio-political norm that obliges humanity to specifically back up dead peoples hard drives.
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago> You simply cannot keep data forever. I wonder if the data that they're collecting for targeting advertising is also being deleted, because you know you can't keep it forever, right? Oh that's right, of course they're not deleting that. Stop parroting corporate talking points.
- 3y ago
- ottoludd 3y agoThe conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this is a means of preventing other companies from using YouTube videos to train AI. Google will have access to the whole of YouTube uploads, whereas the rest of the world will only have access to the videos that were uploaded by active accounts.
- CTOSian 3y agobtw , they mention a couple of exceptions to this policy, YMMV * Your Google Account contains a gift card with a monetary balance. * Your Google Account has been used to purchase a digital item, for example, a book or movie.
- yomlica8 3y agoSo can you send a small gift card to your accounts to keep it active?