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An update to storage policies across your Google Account

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Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#61

Post by ghaff »

vecinu wrote: post #15
fhrow4484 wrote: post #9

The same happened to my old "...@hotmail.com" email, Microsoft deleted old childhood emails, still bitter about that. Per https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail... , the limit is 365 days of inactivity.

Likewise, so many amazing memories lost. I wish I could look back to how naive and childish I was at the beginning of my time online.

To give a little perspective, I basically don't have any pre-Yahoo/Google email history. So maybe going back 20 years or so and not much in the way of digital archives before about 10 years before that. Essentially nothing from BBS days, email on various proprietary systems, etc. Some shards here and there from the 1980s and a few things that were digitized prior.

I'm not sure if it's good or bad (probably a bit of both) that much of my early time online is largely gone--and I didn't have a significant time "online" before I was about 20 or so.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#62

Post by GekkePrutser »

hkt wrote: post #49
didip wrote: post #26

So, is there a cloud email backup service? I had this happen to my hotmail and that sucked.

Why not just.. pay for an email account? There are lots of community oriented providers which don't just kill off accounts in this way and are generally pretty cheap. See sdf.org and webarchitects.coop, both of which are membership based and reasonably priced. (Disclaimer: I'm a member of both)

I thought SDF was even free? I never used it myself but I know of it.

Also to be honest: If you're not even going to log into your email for 2 years, why bother even paying for it? :)

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#63

Post by ryandrake »

jamesfe wrote: post #30

What's another good email provider? I am starting to feel really nervous about storing my life in Google. It's not that I wouldn't pay for these things...it's just that I worry one day I'll lose access and fall into the pit of "trying to get Google to help a single human regain access" that sounds horrible.

Backups and self-hosting! These threads keep coming up where [Cloud service] deletes someone's data, bans their account, or otherwise denies service suddenly, and someone always asks "What [other cloud service] should I utterly rely on?" Maybe the answer is to not rely on cloud services to store the only copy of something precious or important to you.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#64

Post by GekkePrutser »

In a way I think this is a good thing. When someone dies their history will be cleaned up automatically. Leaving less burden on their family to clean it all up. It's a big problem nowadays, because the processes to get someone's accounts closed aren't simple at all.

I wouldn't want my emails to be around forever. And while I'm alive I will definitely check it more than once a day, let alone once every 2 years :P

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#65

Post by swiley »

gtirloni wrote: post #48

These posts bashing Google are getting tiring. No sensible free email service will hold your emails forever, especially if you're not using your account. I'd invite people without knowledge of running a business to take the time and think this through before jumping in the outrage bandwagon.

The problem is that everyone treats gmail like it's a component of internet infrastructure. When your personal emails go to your friend's spam folder regardless of how conformant and well behaved your mail server is and they think its your fault for not using gmail, that's a problem.

I've had google lock me out of my account due to their bad password reset heuristic (which is a social scaling problem due to the above) which means I'll completely lose my address in a year (currently forwarded to my own domain.)

There are similar social network effects with eg. Facebook, iMessage etc. although the abuses and problems are slightly different.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#66

Post by screamingninja »

chadlavi wrote: post #25

so if I have registered MyChildsFullName @ gmail to prevent anyone else from taking it, I now need to make sure it gets at least one email every couple years to prevent them from deleting it before my child is old enough to use it?

> it gets at least one email every couple years

Receiving emails does not seem to have anything to do with it. You need to login once every two years.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#67

Post by rococode »

Yahoo Mail does the same with only a 1 year threshold and regardless of how much data you use. Don't log in for 12 months = lose everything. Sadly found this out the hard way - most of my childhood email accounts were wiped :'(

Now they're also disabling email forwarding for free users which I've been relying on for a decade to catch occasionally relevant emails. Might really be forced to shell out the $3.49 a month for their paid option...

I guess this is kind of inevitable with the scale of storage these kinds of companies work with. Probably someday Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. will have similar plans as the older data they store starts losing its value.

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/11/05/yahoo-mail-drops-email-for...

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#68

Post by ge96 »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #9

The same happened to my old "...@hotmail.com" email, Microsoft deleted old childhood emails, still bitter about that. Per https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail... , the limit is 365 days of inactivity.

I guess my deceased dad's email was deleted(hotmail). I found an old email address of his and was trying to get into it just to reconnect since he died when I was a child. I get shouldn't see other people's stuff but still... would have been interesting as it was in the early 2000's that he was around. Would have liked to see how his mind operated. Afterall he was a successful person (eg. operating a 60ft yacht for several years) and he also referred to the handover of Hong Kong to China 1997 in recent context. I unfortunately did not inherit/learn that business savviness aspect. Seeing his emails would have been like time travel.

I had that Black Mirror thought to strip personality from data.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#69

Post by lkbm »

gtirloni wrote: post #48

These posts bashing Google are getting tiring. No sensible free email service will hold your emails forever, especially if you're not using your account. I'd invite people without knowledge of running a business to take the time and think this through before jumping in the outrage bandwagon.

There's nothing in this article that's bashing them. It's useful information about a policy change.
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