Google’s Plan to Delete Inactive Accounts Shows the Internet Isn't Forever

The company's strategy of deleting inactive accounts after two years shows the real risk of having a single account for everything, if the goal is to keep content online forever.

This initiative by Google became even more urgent following an internal investigation of the company's data, which revealed that abandoned accounts are at least 10 times less likely than active accounts to have the 2-step verification set up. Which means that these accounts are often vulnerable and, once compromised, can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, such as spam.

Google offers many warnings and even allows you to set up a system for inactive accounts to be accessed by approved contacts. All that needs to be done to keep a Google account 'alive' is to log in and perform any activity. A single search or Gmail upload is sufficient.