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Inactive Google Account Policy
51–60 of 83 posts
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#52Given that G states that "doing a search" is considered to be "activity" it shouldn't be too hard to rig up an automated account shaker which at large but not too large intervals - something between 16 and 22 months - logs in on some headless browser, searches Google for a random thing and logs out again.
> logs in on some headless browser What if the account is secured by 2FA? Are you advocating to disable 2FA for the sake of your automated continuity of the account?
You can automate 2FA too.
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#53Wish you could check your inactivity status more closely than their suggested "if you're not sure, just sign in to the Google account". I have a couple Google accounts that are just pulling email to a separate mailbox and who knows if that's active or not. Maybe I'll have to buy something on one of those accounts just to get it exempt? Also reading this closely there's separate timers per product? This is worse than…
Exactly. You can buy a $1.99 movie on your Google account and that stops expiry indefinitely.
As much as I hate to feed the machine, having a financial transaction on the record definitely feels like the most approachable way to stay flagged as active.
Solid suggestion. Of course, capricious Google could always change their mind tomorrow, but it is something actionable.
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Don't depend on "free" for critical functions. All the cards are stacked against the users though. It's not that easy for a non-tech person to use any sort of email/photo library etc that isn't free from Google/Apple etc. Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you. If Google intentionally incentivized everyone to move their entire digital lives into their p…
> Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you. That's not been my experience - I've successfully self-hosted email for nearly a decade now. Really nice guide here: https://thomas-leister.de/en/mailserver-debian-stretch/
Same here, been self hosting on a managed VPS for about a decade for my business, there's very little maintenance, our deliverability is excellent.
Not that there are zero issues, in particular if you set up a brand new mail server with zero reputation, it can take a while to get yourself out of the hole.
I think for normal people though it makes a lot more sense to just pay for email. I'm not sympathetic at all to someone who complains about the quality of service of free Gmail. You are the product, so for the ten millionth time, it's going to suck for you somehow. Fastmail costs 3 bucks a month, if you have 3 bucks, go buy it, it's better (or buy one of their many decent competitors).
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one said anything about Google absolutely deleting data. They specifically state, "reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data" ... and further below "and all of its content and data may be deleted" Call me suspicious, but reserves the right and may be deleted to me says that they may not actually have plans of deleting the account data outright. Maybe they just can't even gua…
Didn't they say they weren't going to allow email address reuse?
Found it
> After a Google Account is deleted, the Gmail address for the deleted account cannot be used again when creating a new Google Account.
In an email they sent
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#56Now if only I could get the data out of my account. I've spent far too long arguing with people at Google, but I can't get into my account because I lost the phone number attached to it, even though I have the password, and a recovery email address and all the mail from my Gmail gets forwarded to that address as it comes in. They say I have no right to my data since I can't log into the account, but I don't think the…
I had a scenario where the reset flow to my account wasn’t working - it would send the code, but the code would not work.
Google had no ability to speak to a human, and don’t care about me or you in the slightest.
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#57I think of likely reasons this happens is username exhaustion. >100 million people are born every year, it won’t take centuries for us to fill up every namespaces with dead accounts. Before that inevitably happens, there will probably be a point we all have to switch over to identification not by user selected username but random alphanumeric ID string, with display names only for search, free from uniqueness require…
Or they could just create a second email domain every 30 years, if that’s even a problem in the first place.
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#58I don't work for google. I use Google, I have multiple Gmail as well as hosted by Google workspace domains. Overall I think this is reasonable. I can't see why people are upset, when the general burden to make it "live" is low. There are specific corner case problems: people who cannot login for various reasons, can't get Google humans to help, and who get mail forwarded so are limping along. And, there are a surpris…
It’s fair to delete data. It’s not fair to delete the account.
People have email addresses linked up to all kinds of other accounts. Sometimes my only way into an old non-Google account is a gmail address I made a long time ago. Often there is no way to change the email address linked to an account.
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't realize that. So if I have Mozilla Thunderbird running on a computer fetching emails from an account, it isn't good enough? > Reading or sending an email I would need to actually mark incoming emails as read?
I mean, this is just my guess; I could be wrong. But the vibe I get is that you basically have to do something non-trivial via the web (log in, create something, delete something, whatever) to show that a human is paying attention to the account and not just an automated system. Don't rely on automated means like IMAP, regardless of what actions you're performing with those.
I assume it’s tied to logging in or using the account while logged in. Email is a separate system, it’s possible they linked up the email system to the accounts system, but the easiest way to implement this would just be to update a timestamp every time someone logs in or makes an authenticated browser request.
Re: Inactive Google Account Policy
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Don't depend on "free" for critical functions. All the cards are stacked against the users though. It's not that easy for a non-tech person to use any sort of email/photo library etc that isn't free from Google/Apple etc. Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you. If Google intentionally incentivized everyone to move their entire digital lives into their p…
> Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you. That's not been my experience - I've successfully self-hosted email for nearly a decade now. Really nice guide here: https://thomas-leister.de/en/mailserver-debian-stretch/
There are people who have experienced problems.
https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-...