[HN Gopher] Google will delete all your data on Gmail, etc. if y...
___________________________________________________________________
Google will delete all your data on Gmail, etc. if you are inactive
for 2 years
Author : e2e4
Score : 148 points
Date : 2020-12-03 21:06 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.indiatvnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.indiatvnews.com)
| afterburner wrote:
| ... Promise?
| chadlavi wrote:
| 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?
| agilebyte wrote:
| Who are you trying to prevent from taking the handle? Seems
| like it's either a) adults - that have a legit use for it now,
| b) soon to be adults that will have a legit use for it sooner
| than your kid does.
| chadlavi wrote:
| It's a very unique name combination, no one else on earth
| would have a legitimate use for it. It's more a matter of
| just making sure I own and control it so I can give it to
| them later.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| There are a lot of mailing list and spam operators that
| wouldn't mind helping you out with that
| screamingninja wrote:
| > 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.
| didip wrote:
| So, is there a cloud email backup service? I had this happen to
| my hotmail and that sucked.
| nix23 wrote:
| Why are you waiting until that backup service goes bankrupt?
| Buy a HD and backup your stuff at home.
| hkt wrote:
| 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)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| 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? :)
| hkt wrote:
| SDF does have a free account yeah. Also a lifetime
| membership, but the quarterly one is amazing value for
| money.
| eplanit wrote:
| Will they do it upon request, too?
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Company giving you tons of free shit gives marginally less long
| lasting free shit. And its only if you're OVER the storage limit
| for an entire 2 years. And you can choose to pay for more storage
| if you'd rather keep the data. It's really not that bad...
|
| I think sometimes people hold Google to insanely high standards.
| They gave us so much free stuff that people get mad when they try
| to charge for it. Others say to move to paid services, but people
| would absolutely lose their shit if Google started charging for
| Gmail, Maps etc.
| laumars wrote:
| I'm often the first to criticise Google but what they're doing
| here isn't exactly unprecedented. Free online mail providers have
| been removing inactive users since the 90s. Cloud storage
| providers remove inactive free users. A lot of companies even
| have a far more aggressive time line (pretty sure 90s Yahoo Mail
| was in the region of months rather than years) so 2 years seems
| pretty generous to me.
|
| At the end of the day if you're neither paying for nor even using
| the service, then why should they keep your account active? They
| have no obligation to store people's data indefinitely at their
| own expense.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| Sometimes you want that email address to forward somewhere
| because you used it for years. Maybe Google should consider
| allowing a permanent email forward and then more people could
| delete that gmail account they don't use.
| jamesfe wrote:
| 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.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I wish I could find this company again I saw online. It was a
| family owned "google photos" that was pay for, specifically and
| only sold photo storage for securing your family pictures.
| Dammit! Someone help!
| izacus wrote:
| FastMail / ProtonMail are good. But even they won't just store
| your mail forever for free.
| jamesfe wrote:
| I'd pay. But mostly, I'd pay to know the customer service
| would respond to me. Customer service at Google is like
| trying to cancel Verizon service - endless transfers.
| gravitas wrote:
| I chose FastMail + domain (standard plan, one user) after
| spending way too long weighing all the provider options this
| year; so far it's been great for me (email only, files/data
| went elsewhere).
|
| The hardest part is dealing with all the websites who (a)
| don't let you change your email, (b) require you to contact
| Support to change your email, or (c) break when you try to
| change your email. FastMail migrated everything (contacts
| too) from GMail with one click and set up an IMAP poller
| against it while you work on the long road to convert. $0.02
|
| Edit: just to cover my bases, a 10-year registration of the
| domain was < $100 USD at Namesilo.
| 0x53 wrote:
| Like everyone else is saying: fastmail.com. If you pay for 3
| years up front it is like $3 a month.
| eins1234 wrote:
| More important than the current email provider you happen to
| use is controlling your email _address_, and this means using a
| domain you control.
|
| It enables for a surprisingly pain-free email migration
| experiences as I found out not too long ago, where all you have
| to do is point the DNS records to the new provider and do an
| IMAP import from your old email provider, and everything will
| just work as you'd expect.
|
| If I wasn't already sold on the power of federation, that would
| definitely have sold me.
| eu wrote:
| fastmail.com
| DenverCode wrote:
| I recently switched to FastMail and couldn't be happier.
| cbsks wrote:
| I've been very happy at Fastmail for the past few years. Their
| customer support has been quick and very helpful for me. It's
| paid so I know that I am a customer and not a product.
|
| When I signed up I just forwarded my old gmail account to it.
| Now it sounds like I should finally update my email address for
| all the services still using it!
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| machinelabo wrote:
| Any specific packages you recommend for setting up email?
|
| I would think there is some docker container I can run in a
| VM and go about my business.
| therealmarv wrote:
| Never get in captivity without Internet access for more than 2
| years ;)
| bagacrap wrote:
| such as prison
| therealmarv wrote:
| I had more in mind things like "Cast Away" or poor souls who
| were held in captivity in a remote foreign country by the
| government there or local pirates or terrorists. When you
| return to "normal" life you even loose your email, photos and
| everything just because you could not log in for 2 years :(
| noodles_nomore wrote:
| Future headline: I was captured as a sex slave for two years
| and when I finally sneaked internet access Google had deleted
| all my contacts
| 7357 wrote:
| Tangentially (is that a word?), I remember when I was sold on
| buying a macbook, the plastic white one, back when I was young
| (2009?) and innocent. I had also purchased a one year 'me' email
| account. Then a burglar broke into my home and stole among other
| things the laptop, it was around one year after the initial
| purchase date. And when I reacted the subscription was expired. I
| never could recover my hardware or my data. Good old times.
| pier25 wrote:
| What's going on at Google? They have been cutting down on storage
| for the past couple of months.
|
| Maybe they are bleeding storage costs?
| jsnell wrote:
| Dupe from a month ago, with multiple 300+ comment threads:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25060973
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25081350
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25060882
| johncena33 wrote:
| HN crowd feels like they are on a jihad against Google. Pretty
| much every other email provider does it. This is a free service
| that they are not paying. But yet they like to keep bashing on
| Google.
| wiswindsurf wrote:
| They deleted my youtube vids. Now there is guy in California that
| claims he invented what was shown as an invention in one of my
| videos. Got $10 million in startup capital for it. Video was
| 2009.
| jeffgreco wrote:
| Google encouraged opening a Gmail account for your kid and
| emailing it memories as they grow up.
|
| So now once they turn 13 and you hand over the password, it'll be
| deleted?
| kull wrote:
| This missing ")" in the title and in the content gives me
| goosebumps.
| sam1r wrote:
| They stop your gmail from receiving inbound emails if you don't
| pay to upgrade for storage [15gb]. Within 24 hours!
|
| I just reached that, and the first alert I see on my email [1]
| feels quite threatening. It's like I came home, and there's an
| unexpected eviction on the door.
|
| IMO, this is way worse that account inactivity. Who remembers
| that ever-increasing ticker on the gmail homepage that advertised
| "Your storage with us is always growing", and it was like 10gb +
| the counter was increasing live.
|
| Ridiculous.
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/a/fBrlu4t
| adav wrote:
| Thank you for alerting me to this! I'm not sure why, but the
| impression I've had since those early days of gmail was that
| users would be unlikely to ever need to delete an email again
| karmasimida wrote:
| This is reasonable.
|
| Delete some filter emails won't take you 10 minutes
| sam1r wrote:
| Agreed. Just more peeved that it upon registration, this
| would be the last exit I would have imagined from the
| product.
|
| The marketing to acquire users versus to keep them are just
| polarizing. Hey! Free growing memory. Later... Nope. You
| reached the limit + we stopped your emails from coming in.
|
| I'm definitely on the way out, just have been lazy about it.
| pan69 wrote:
| What about Gmail accounts that forward email to another account?
| It's an account that is actively used but I never log into such
| account.
| modeless wrote:
| Good question. I'd be fine if that account stopped storing mail
| as long as the forwarding kept working.
| bird_monster wrote:
| Delete? Or just make it unavailable to you? If delete, sign me
| up.
| tartoran wrote:
| That's a good point. I think google doesn't delete anything
| unless the law forces them to do so.
| jefftk wrote:
| 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)
| bird_monster wrote:
| I wouldn't believe that Google deletes data even if they
| wrote it in stone.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| 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"?
| bird_monster wrote:
| 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?
| bagacrap wrote:
| 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.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Wow, so everyone who's in jail or going to jail will lose their
| accounts
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Sort of an interesting related question around privacy policy
| updates maybe?
|
| If a user hasn't interacted with your platform in multiple years,
| it becomes hard to validate that they've consented to any data-
| use changes you push out.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Just logged on and downloaded all my photos!
| rektide wrote:
| 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 log-off in the sky.
|
| I really thought a dozen GB of storage from Google to each
| individual in the world was pretty reasonable. That there is
| plenty enough resources. But no, in to the garbage file society
| goes. Throw out all the past. It was the promise, but it's not
| sound business.
| [deleted]
| 0_____0 wrote:
| i've been meaning to buy a pro-quality photo printer... had the
| idea to host a party where people can pitch in for materials
| and i could print all our photos on nice archival paper and
| we'd spend an evening scrapbooking
| jefftk wrote:
| If you just want the photos printed, a printing service will
| be much cheaper. You're paying a lot for the privilege of
| being able to print high quality photos in your own home.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I've always told my relatives to get a huge hard drive,
| backblaze for backup, and stick all their photos on their own
| computer. If they want to use the cloud for convenience that's
| fine, but if the service decides to cancel your account you
| should always have another place with your data.
|
| My wife currently has a 2TB nvme ssd in her Thinkpad laptop.
| Around 1TB of that is pictures and photos.
| nicoburns wrote:
| After losing two hard drives in the same week, I now consider
| cloud backup to be _more_ reliable. I did eventually (a
| couple of years later) manage to fix one of the drives by
| freezing it, but for a while I thought I 'd lost several
| years worth of photos. The rule around having data in at
| least 3 places is definitely a sound one.
| thisgoodlife wrote:
| No matter which service provider you choose, always backup your
| important data. Simply changing service providers won't make
| your data safe.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| If they are using it they aren't inactive? 2 years of no
| activity on a free account is a long time. What realistically
| are you existing from anyone else?
| falcolas wrote:
| 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."
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > It's especially problematic when there's no countdown
|
| "The company said it will notify users multiple times
| before attempting to remove any content."
| falcolas wrote:
| 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.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| > "If you're over your storage limit for two years, Google may
| delete your content across Gmail, Drive and Photos," the company
| said.
|
| That's different from just deleting all your data because you're
| inactive. Which is it?
|
| Edit: it seems both. Here's the blog post (maybe this is a better
| link): https://blog.google/products/photos/storage-policy-update/
| sam1r wrote:
| Curious if one would even receive the notification emails prior
| to content deletion.
|
| Once you hit the 15gb limit, you stop receiving emails within
| 24 hours. 2 years is plenty time versus "Hey. You are out of
| storage. In 24 hours, we're cutting off communication." [1]
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/a/fBrlu4t
| [deleted]
| gtirloni wrote:
| 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.
| aketchum wrote:
| While I would normally agree with you, Google has advertised
| unlimited, free storage forever for things like photos and
| email. They should not have made that promise and I understand
| why they are breaking the promise now, but if you break a
| promise it seems reasonable for people to be irate about it.
| swiley wrote:
| 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.
| lkbm wrote:
| There's nothing in this article that's bashing them. It's
| useful information about a policy change.
| johncena33 wrote:
| You probably have missed reading the comments in this very
| same thread.
| sorenjan wrote:
| From the email I got from Google a few minutes ago:
|
| > Summary of the new policies (effective June 1, 2021):
|
| > * If you're inactive for 2 years (24 months) in Gmail, Drive or
| Photos, we may delete the content in the product(s) in which
| you're inactive. Google One members who are within their storage
| quota and in good-standing will not be impacted by this new
| inactive policy.
|
| > * If you exceed your storage limit for 2 years, we may delete
| your content across Gmail, Drive and Photos.
|
| Is Google running out of storage?
| jonatron wrote:
| Someone probably just ran the numbers and said we'd save X if
| we delete inactive users and users of the limit.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Nah, the data has already been harvested and used so it isn't
| worth storing it anymore (except to you of course).
| hated wrote:
| Historical data probably isn't as rich in detail as the new
| stuff they are collecting. I bet the old data is too coarse
| grained to be effectively joined across a variety of newer data
| tracking sources.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| If the users are inactive they aren't seeing ads. Google isn't
| a charity, why would they pay for storage that isn't being
| used?
|
| Also, somewhat morbidly, dead people don't really need their
| photos and emails hosted perpetually.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| They don't, but as a society we would all benefit from some
| way to archive at least some of that. Future historians will
| curse us for not leaving behind letters, photos, etc. (which
| is especially ironic given how much more of them we're each
| generating).
| notimetorelax wrote:
| Heh, now try to win the privacy debate that's on the other
| side of your argument.
| Lexarius wrote:
| If you're worried about your data evaporating, consider
| using Google Inactive Account Manager to set up a way to
| automatically gift your data to a family member.
| https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
| fhrow4484 wrote:
| 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.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| M$ used to delete HoTMaiL emails after 2w inactivity in the
| early 2000s. Back when the limit was 20MB.
| throwaway123x2 wrote:
| Heh I remember when they changed the 6MB limit to 2MB
| mypalmike wrote:
| 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).
| Angostura wrote:
| It's why I use POP wherever possible.
| cryptoz wrote:
| I lost my domain from this. I didn't log in for 30 days (2006)
| and they closed my account. Then they let someone else register
| my email, which they used to steal my domain. No recourse.
|
| Haven't used MS services since then if I can avoid it.
| whymauri wrote:
| In a weird way, it's kinda comforting that other people have
| felt this. I spent ten (!) years trying to recover my childhood
| e-mail address which got hacked when I was a kid (password was
| 1123456789, lol). It was only this year that I _finally_ got to
| a human support agent who could verify my ID and told me that
| the account was completely wiped.
|
| It was a bittersweet moment, for sure.
| blackrock wrote:
| Hmm.. that sounds like my password.
| tpoacher wrote:
| "Amazing! I've got the same on my luggage!"
| dudus wrote:
| That has to be why they call it office 365.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Well it's certainly not the uptime!
| pcdoodle wrote:
| haha.... :'(
| Aeolun wrote:
| I guess there is some measure of uptime every day?
| px43 wrote:
| Also a massive security hole. I needed to do a password reset
| on my old ebay account, but the hotmail account it was attached
| to was deleted, so I just created a new hotmail account with
| the same name, and reset my password. I've done this maybe
| three or four time, because I haven't used hotmail since high
| school, so they keep deleting it.
|
| A lot of people also have password resets on gmail linked to
| their old hotmail accounts, so you can just re-create their old
| hotmail to hijack their current gmail.
| spicybright wrote:
| Omg, yikes. Email is the universal "password reset" mechanism
| for the whole web too. Re-using emails sounds like a bad plan
| just from the start, surprised services allow that.
| vecinu wrote:
| 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.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > I wish I could look back to how naive and childish I was at
| the beginning of my time online.
|
| This is the video that comes to mind:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoUrLbHg5z4
| Aeolun wrote:
| Yeah, at the time I archived a bunch of MSN messenger chats,
| and looking back at those now is fantastic. Unfortunately
| it's the only thing I have left. There must be a DVD
| somewhere with my my documents folder from 2004, but it's
| lost to time.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| I have email from when I got my college email address in
| the late 90s, but I still can't find email from earlier,
| when I had a couple different addresses that I'd gotten
| from my local dial-up ISP. I was always -- even then, when
| hard drive space was expensive -- pretty good about keeping
| old data as I moved from machine to machine, so it really
| bums me out that I can't find that old stuff.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I lost my free Hotmail account almost a decade when the limit
| was 30 days.
| Nas808 wrote:
| I still have an old @msn.com email address, I remember at the
| time you could choose from @hotmail.com, @msn.com or
| @passport.com. Haven't used it for email for at least a decade,
| but I do use it for OneDrive so my account stays "active".
| spicybright wrote:
| Ha, passport.com. Thx for the memories.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| 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 itself in years, although it is one
| of the accounts I've linked to my Outlook app. So the mere act
| of polling an account for email might be enough to be
| considered "active".
|
| I haven't checked what would happen if I did the same polling
| but only used Thunderbird instead.
| koolba wrote:
| 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.
| spicybright wrote:
| Yuk. What use is a SaaS for archiving when it's just going
| to "sun set" in 6 months after the owners sell it to
| Google?
| ge96 wrote:
| 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.
| cm2187 wrote:
| My reaction in a similar situation was to rather preserve his
| privacy. I don't know that mailboxes should be made available
| to relatives after one dies.
| ge96 wrote:
| Yeah and it could go both ways. You can try to get
| something out of it or also what if you're tied to their
| problems(eg. debt) that would suck. But yeah TL;DR I don't
| really remember my own father so would be nice to see more
| of what his life was like.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Personally I think it would be fun if my son was
| interested in what's in my emails after I'm dead. On the
| other hand, it's all horribly mundane, so you'd quickly
| get bored.
| javagram wrote:
| Set a reminder every 3 or 6 months to use Google Takeout.
| Download a full copy of your data to a hard drive in your local
| possession.
|
| If you're really paranoid, download a 2nd copy and put it on a
| hard drive that you then leave unplugged from all computers and
| the internet until the next time.
|
| Simple solution for anyone with broadband, and then if you ever
| lost your cloud data due to subscription lapsing or inactivity
| you have 1-2 local copies for you or your family.
| spullara wrote:
| Is there an automated version of this?
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps, if it can recognize traffic lights and crosswalks.
| spicybright wrote:
| Wait, what's the danger of keeping your backup on an internet
| connected machine?
| olliej wrote:
| I mean it seems reasonable for Google to expunge inactive
| accounts, but does this mean not using your account (damn near
| unavoidable these days, esp. with chrome wanting it), or is just
| not using photos/gmail sufficient?
| kelchm wrote:
| Headline seems inaccurate/ misleading to me. Quote from Google in
| the article:
|
| > If you're over your storage limit for two years, Google may
| delete your content across Gmail, Drive and Photos
|
| Honestly that seems far more generous than I'd expect -- why
| should Google (or any other company) be expected to store your
| data indefinitely if you stop paying them?
| nashashmi wrote:
| Because we got used to that. They trained us to be this way.
| It's their fault. Why did they have to give us free stuff and
| then take it away? It's not fair. It's been free as air. Not
| free as water.
|
| /rant.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Because the reason I signed up for GMail in 2004 was that they
| promised that they keep my emails _forever_
| gubby wrote:
| Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1150/
| brnt wrote:
| They promised 1GB, had a counter that slowly increased and
| thens settled at 15GB, as I remember.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Sure, but I'm right now paying for 1TB space, and I can
| easily forget for example if a credit card expires. Google
| makes enough money from my subscriptions to at least write
| my data to a tape when I stop paying, so that I can access
| it again even 10 years later when I start paying again.
| joshuakelly wrote:
| This is speculation, but I wonder if this is not the outcome of
| legal compliance efforts with respect to defined data retention
| periods in various pieces of consumer privacy legislation over
| the last few years.
|
| From Recital 39 of the GDPR:
|
| "This requires, in particular, ensuring that the period for which
| the personal data are stored is limited to a strict minimum.
| Personal data should be processed only if the purpose of the
| processing could not reasonably be fulfilled by other means. In
| order to ensure that the personal data are not kept longer than
| necessary, time limits should be established by the controller
| for erasure or for a periodic review."
|
| In the context of F500, I've seen compliance efforts around this
| that have mandated deletion in the case of inactivity for
| consumer applications that most people would have reasonably
| assumed would have been kept around even if they didn't log in.
|
| This is hinted at in the article "...to better align with common
| practices across the industry, the company said on Wednesday."
| And if we're going to take a cynical view, wouldn't it be that
| Google would _never_ delete user data (the source of their
| revenue) unless they absolutely had to?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| 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
| rococode wrote:
| 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...
| maciekmm wrote:
| If you are using gmail, you probably could use "Check email
| from other accounts:" under "Settings / Accounts and Import".
| It fetches new mails periodically using POP3 or IMAP.
|
| If you host your own mail server, you could use
| https://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-man.html instead.
| rococode wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! Will definitely look into how that works.
| limeblack wrote:
| When do the deactivate accounts then? I have had 2 at least
| deactivated had to connect them all together with a phone number.
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