A good exercise that we should all do from time to time is review the saved passwords and check the user accounts that we have abandoned. They may have disappeared, but most are usually in hibernation, with the data still available . The same goes for your Google account. Your Gmail account is saving messages, contacts , logins, browsing histories and other personal information. What to do with that data and information when you are no longer or stop using your Gmail account?
Technically, your Gmail account or Google account remain active for two years . Or put another way, 24 months. And he is not the only one who has this policy. Microsoft too. Years ago, the grace period was only 9 months. When the account becomes inactive , the content associated with that account is deleted from Google's servers. Messages, files, photos, videos, contacts … In any case, Google will send you several messages notifying you of this so that you can log in with your account and thus reset the counter.
But there is a way to speed up this process, or to customize it. In practice, you can configure your Gmail account or Google account so that self-destructs after a period of time in disuse, that is, when you stop logging in with them. Thus, when the time comes, all the content of your Gmail account will be deleted from Google's servers.
The Inactive Account Manager
Email messages, private conversations, contact details, personal notes … Your Gmail account is very personal because you store sensitive content in it. And if we take into account that your Gmail account is also a Google account , keep in mind that this account stores information related to Drive, YouTube, Maps, Android, Chrome and a host of applications, online, mobile and desktop services and tools.
Thanks to the Inactive Google Account Manager, presented in October 2021, we can decide when our Google account or Gmail account will be considered inactive and, therefore, the data and associated contents will be removed from the servers.
You will find the Inactive Account Manager at this link. To access it you will have to log in with your email address and password. Once inside, we can do several things. By clicking on the button Start , Google will ask us when we want our Gmail account to appear as inactive. At the time of this writing, the options to choose from are 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and 18 months. For the counter to start, you must stop logging in with your Google account or Gmail account.
Like I said before, Google will warn you before this happens. “Before taking action, we will try to contact you several times by SMS and email.” Following this message, you can enter your mobile phone number and / or your email addresses. If they are already in your personal profile, they will appear there.
Share Google account data
Optionally, you can decide who or whom to notify when your Google account appears inactive. Up to a maximum of 10 people . You can also say what information or data to share with those people. This option has to do with those who die . Thus, as a digital will, you can decide if you want to bequeath part of your data to friends, family and / or acquaintances or leave no trace for personal reasons . What's more, you can configure an automatic reply message to reply to the messages received by that account.
Finally, you can confirm that you want your data and personal information to be deleted when your Google or Gmail account is configured as inactive. This will happen after about three months if you decide to share your data and content. In other words, once the account is inactive, those who can access its content will have three months to do so. Later it will be impossible, since the account and associated files will be deleted.
As you have seen, setting your Gmail account to self-destruct is very easy. Too bad that the period of time or countdown is several months . However, thanks to this option, if you stop using your Google account, you can forget about it, since Google itself will delete your account and its content after a few months in a strip less time than the current two years.
