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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

#71

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.

When Outlook.com was first made available as a mail domain back in 2012, I immediately went and registered a few accounts, figuring that it would become a high-profile service pretty quickly. One of them I have almost never used, and in its eight-year lifespan it's received...(checks)...7 emails. All of which were from Microsoft. That account is still up, though, and I don't believe I've checked it from the website i…

If IMAP only usage was considered inactive I’d have lost my gmail and hotmail accounts over a decade ago.

Startup idea: SaaS that you register you email addresses and periodically does an IMAP request to keep them active. Premium tier would provide actual archiving of your emails.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#72
post #51
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. I think google doesn't delete anything unless the law forces them to do so.

That's not correct. If you delete things they are actually deleted, though it does take a few months to be gone from everywhere. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19965615 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980863 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19809320 , etc) (Disclosure: I work for google, speaking only for myself)

I wouldn't believe that Google deletes data even if they wrote it in stone.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#74
post #3

I used to tell my relatives to use Google Photos, so we wouldn't all lose their photos. I no longer tell them to use Google Photos. Edit: Some of my relatives are growing old. There's a lot of talk of backups & storage. But none of that is going to preserve the digital memories we have shared, after they die. All the old URLs that have been shared will, not rot & wither, but one day just up and vanish. Up to the big…

[deleted]

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#76
post #54

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.

That has to be why they call it office 365.

Well it's certainly not the uptime!

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#77
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you're coming from, but isn't 2 years an awful long time for Google to have to use your data the way Google, and Google alone chooses, even if "delete" really means "delete"?

My statement is more about what I would _like_. Meaning, if Google is saying 'If you stop using google products, 2 years later we will full delete all of your data', I would spot using them today, right now. If there is grey area, I probably wouldn't/don't care, because what can I really do?

you can manually delete your account and all data, today, and Google will actually delete everything much sooner than two years from now. You can also set your account to auto delete n months after it becomes inactive.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's another "We've altered the terms of our deal. Pray we don't alter them any further," from Google. Changing policies in a destructive fashion is never good for a customer. EDIT: It's especially problematic when there's no countdown, and it's not "inactive account wide", it's "inactive in product X."

> It's especially problematic when there's no countdown "The company said it will notify users multiple times before attempting to remove any content."

How? On your inactive email account?

My experience has shown that they're not great about deletion notifications. They changed how deleted items work in Drive, but never notified me outside of drive (work or personal, my memory backed up by a negative gmail search). Which was fine in this instance, but it doesn't set a great trend.

It's unfortunate, too, because their security group is nicely pedantic in notifying you about things.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#79

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.

Same - many years of emails just gone. That experience is what made me start archiving all my email locally (simply Thunderbird with IMAP + routine Time Machine backups).
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