Here's How to Keep Google From Deleting Your Inactive Gmail Account

Google announced back in May that starting in December, it would begin the process of purging "inactive" Gmail accounts, which applies to any account that hasn't been used or logged in for two years. And the company is making good on that promise, and will begin to delete inactive accounts starting Dec. 1.

Once an email account is purged, it is permanently deleted and there's no way to recover it. That means that any photos, documents, or important emails tied to the account could be gone forever. And since many users have multiple Gmail accounts for different reasons, you may not even realize that your account has gone inactive.

In addition to Gmail, the new policy will also impact any Google Photos, Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google Calendar accounts that have gone inactive. But the good news is that it's pretty easy to fix.

Simply log into your inactive account and read or send an email, watch a YouTube video, or do a Google search while logged in.

Alternately, those who don't want to be bothered with logging in every two years can use Google Takeout to download a copy of all the data stored on Google products and save the files directly to a computer, hard drive, or other photo storage service.

Old accounts are more likely to be compromised by hackers and identity thieves because people tend to keep outdated passwords; and are also 10 times less likely to use two-factor authentication.

"These are all serious things if you have personal information on there and you forgot about it," NBC business and data reporter Brian Cheung explained on the Today show on Thursday. "That’s the reason why they’re saying, 'We’re going to go through, we’re going to delete these accounts that aren’t active.'"

"The stakes are pretty high, but the solution is pretty easy," Cheung added.