Will Google delete inactive gmail accounts that forward email?

All those people in this thread saying to just login to these accounts to reactivate their deletion timers are off track.

It is virtually impossible to login to an old Google account for which you never set a recovery phone number - and completely impossible if you did set one but no longer own it.

And there is no human support of any kind at Google that you can discuss it with.

Trite reminder: Google sells advertising, not email accounts. P**ing off an individual email user (or many tens of thousands of them) is not something they are going to worry about. What are you going to do, stop using the Internet?

I receive emails on several accounts I never log in to, which forward through my main account and they do not appear to be flagged as inactive.

Maybe sharing my experience helps in some way:

I’ve been using a handful of these accounts nearly 10 years ago. Not much if any mails received on them for at least a few years, and received the inactive notification for all of them last month. Note the nuance that these account didn’t have mail to forward for several years.

Google will send you notices to your backup/recovery email if and when a time comes that they want to delete the account.

Make sure you have a backup/recovery email on the old accounts and you’ll be notified before anything irreversible happens.

Why not Just log into those accounts once?

Your forwarding accounts will probably be deleted according to their policy [0] as active "include these types of actions you take when you sign in or while you’re signed in to your Google Account:

    * Reading or sending an email

    * Using Google Drive

    * Watching a YouTube video

    * Downloading an app on the Google Play Store

    * Using Google Search

    * Using Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service"
 

[0] https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/updating-our-...

Likewise curious about this, I haven’t actively used my gmail account for 5+ years but I still get the occasional genuine email forwarded to my real account from it.

Also curious whether “deleted” means “actually erased” or just “removed from gmail and your mailboxes added to the pile”.

Why not have something log into those accounts and pull the email into your main account?

Not sure but sounds like you’ll have time to try avoid the deletion. The warning emails should forward to your main account.

“Before deleting an account, we will send multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion, to both the account email address and the recovery email (if one has been provided).”

Putting any personally important email account in the hands of some huge corporate provider is pretty much always a recipe for eventual problems.

Although big companies also have some leeway to steal domains (and the associated email addresses) from small companies and hobbyists, so just trying to keep your email to yourself doesn't solve everything.

Of course, that nearly every domain anyone wants is taken already is also a bane on us caused by a big company - Network Solutions, the privatized descendant of the Internic, as they realized their old rule of one entity / on domain didn't have to be followed, and blithely made their first evil sale of 80-odd domains to some household name drug company that wanted a domain for each common ailment or something. The idea of saving readable domains for future generations went right out the windows once someone waved money under their nose (and they didn't use that money to improve their UX for over a decade), and now virtually all registers are shills for shoving domains you don't need down your throats. Ugh. At least the old Internic had ethics.

Just like Google had the do-no-evil motto - somehow I doubt that's still a thing. Good luck getting a lost email account of them - they didn't give my Google phone number back even though the system still knows it's mine.

A bit off topic at this point, sorry.

The way I read their deletion terms, if you have some money in the account's Play Store Balancee (say by depositing a $10 gift card), they won't delete those accounts.

This is oddly comforting tbh.

One of the best ways to prevent the count down timer from even starting is to take an old android or iOS burner phone, sign into Google services, leave the phone powered on and connected to a Wi-Fi network, and then walk away.

The countdown timer will never start and it satisfies one of googles requirements.

Another way is to deposit cash into something like Google voice or playstore. I used to use Google voice to call internationally and have like $4 in there. Google won't ever delete this account because of my unused funds. Annoying but worth it if the account is valuable to you.

Regardless, remember when Google used to have that storage counter that kept going up? I do.

So I checked with Google One support, here is the answer from them: (and they were fine with me quoting them in a public forum)

“The short answer will be NO. Google considers an account active if there is a recent login to the account.”

Anecdata of one. I've got a Gmail address that forwards emails to another address.

Somehow I can no longer login to the address that forwards these emails and I can't reset my password. It's been like that for a long time.

Suffice to say I'm transitioning away from Gmail. I also assume that there are more people like me in this situation.

What about delegated account access? Is that considered a login, given it wasn't using the credentials of the account being accessed?