Inactive account deletion

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Inactive account deletion is where accounts get deleted after being unused, with the time-frame often being from 6 months to 5 years.

How it works

Several companies delete or purge accounts that have not shown any signs of activity after a certain period of time (e.g. two years). Some of them announce the account deletion via e-mail days or months before the deletion. If the account is deleted, it is likely all data linked to that account is unrecoverable.

Why it is a problem

• Inactive account deletion policies will adversely affect those who had good reasons to become inactive for a long time. Examples include hospitalization, incarceration, and being in totalitarian countries (i.e. Afghanistan) which are found to have implemented prolonged internet shutdowns, and other unforeseen factors such as the 2023 Hamas hostage crisis and being trapped in scam factories in Southeast Asia for a long period.

• In the case of email services, deletion of inactive accounts could result in major inconvenience for users who used the accounts as multiple factor authentications for important services such as banking.
• Loss of data or devices. A Microsoft account may be needed to access information stored on a Windows computer. If the account is deleted, and backups of the decryption keys are not kept, all information on the computer may be lost. Similarly, Google may brick phones where the Google account credentials are lost.

• Many accounts and contents that were created or owned by now-deceased users are likely affected under such policies. This could mean that immense amounts of valuable or historical significant contents will be lost over time. In some jurisdictions, some companies may allow those with a durable power of attourney, or executors to access accounts. Others, such as Microsoft in the United States require executors to get a court order in order to access a decedents account.

• Ultimately, in both the short and long term, such policies will cause serious erosion of historical integrity, which is especially paramount as in the era of deepfakes, lies and misinformation are just as likely as to arise from the absence of data than the presence of it. The erosion of historical integrity could cause human societies to be vulnerable to "historical context attacks".

Examples

• Discord has a deletion policy on inactive accounts in which accounts that are not used for 2 years or more may be scheduled to be deleted. Before the deletion of the inactive account, users may get an email or text message warning that their account is scheduled to be deleted.
• Google has deleted inactive accounts, often citing 'privacy reasons' as a reason for doing it. The rationale has been ridiculed with some comparing it to a hypothetical scenario where a bank should be burned down if it is not secure against robbers.
• Microsoft has a deletion policy on inactive accounts in which accounts that are not used for 2 years or more may be scheduled to be deleted. Any account that has been locked for more than two years will also be considered "inactive" and will be closed. Before the deletion of the inactive account, users may get an email or text message warning that their account is scheduled to be deleted.
• Protonmail announced a policy in 2022 which entails the deletion of inactive accounts, resulting in a major controversy where many users voice their concerns on the decision. In response to these concerns, Protonmail added an exemption where the inactive account policy would not apply to any accounts which had premium subscriptions at one point, although the exemption was revoked as of 2024. Protonmail accounts that were created before April 9, 2024 has a two year grace period before being subjected to the policy, as opposed to one year for newer accounts. In some cases users have reported success in recovering their inactive accounts after being locked under the policy. As of 2025 many users continue to voice their concerns regarding the inactive account policy, while advocating for sensible measures such as deleting only the contents in the inactive accounts while sparing the accounts themselves.
• Trello, which is owned by Atlassian, has a "Dormant Trello account policy" which said that accounts that are not logged in for more than two years could be subjected to deletions.
• Tuta, formerly known as Tutanota, an email service based in Germany, deletes inactive free accounts after six months of inactivity, although unlike Protonmail, they explicitly allow the possibility of username revival and recovery provided that the user has the correct credentials and creates a paid email account where the revived username would be used as an alias.
• Twitch had implemented deletions of accounts that are not logged in for long periods while reclaiming their usernames in 2017 at least once.
• X, formerly known as Twitter, had in 2023 announced its intentions to delete inactive accounts, although following public backlash it had retracted the decision, saying that inactive accounts would be archived instead while their handles would be freed. Despite the retraction, there are at least one anecdotal reports which alleged X had deleted suspended accounts that are not logged in for a long time.

Proposed solutions

Partly in response to corporate arguments about financial costs that justify harsh inactive account deletion policies, the Pirate Parties International website had published opinion articles advocating for the creation of a Digital Legacies Treaty in which some large email and social media services will be treated as effective public utilities akin to healthcare and emergency services, as the financial costs required for the services to maintain access to user data would become a government expense, akin to a military defense budget. The Pirate Parties International also advocated for structured protocols for the services to follow if they decide to shutter their platforms, which can include bailout, takeover by another platforms, or donation of archival data to archival institutions such as the National Diet Library of Japan, the Bibliothèque nationale of France, and the National Archives of the USA.