Hello lovely people of this forum! I’m degoogling, but no matter what I do, I can’t delete my Google account, I constantly get hit with a “we couldn’t verify it’s you” message and it won’t let me do anything. As a last resort I set up this “plan for your digital legacy” option which supposedly deletes your account after 3 months of inactivity. It also lets “trusted contacts” download your data, but I didn’t add anyone.
Does this actually work? has anyone actually deleted their account this way?
I’ve done this and it worked.
I had used a burner number to set up the account, which I no longer had access to. So this was the only way I could find to delete it.
I did set up a trusted contact, a burner email address elsewhere. There where a lot of emails warning that the account would be deleted. But it went through as they said it would.
Ah, good to know that it worked!! I didn’t set up any trusted contacts though, but there is a recovery phone number, hopefully I’ll receive SMS? and also hopefully it’ll work even without trusted contacts…
Google makes things so difficult!
I was caught in a “we couldn’t verify it’s you” loop, it wouldn’t let me complete any sensitive actions, but that shouldn’t affect the future account deletion right?
It didn’t for me. I was caught in the same kind of loop and the legacy settings was the way out. Just make sure to not accidentally log back in and reset the timer!
Catalyst’s experience matches what I’ve read: the inactivity timer only cares about activity, not whether you can pass verification. The thing to watch is anything that quietly counts as activity, like an old phone or tablet still signed into that account, Chrome sync on another computer, or an app using Sign in with Google. It might be worth signing out of or resetting any old devices that still have the account on them. And if you want any of your data, grab a Takeout export before the deadline, since nothing comes back after deletion.
On a similar note, if Google disables your account and says they will delete the account in the future of you do nothing, do they actually delete everything to the same degree as if I was going to manually delete the account myself?
I’ve recently had a few Google accounts disabled like this and I’m not sure if it’s worth giving Google my phone number and allowing them to manually audit my account just so I can manually delete the account.
Most of what I’m concerned about includes profile information and some emails that were already in the trash bin waiting for permanent deletion. I’m not even sure if the Gmail trash bin is still automatically emptied after 30 days for disabled accounts.
I don’t think I’ll have any activity.. my account said it didn’t have any third party apps associated (which I think is Sign in with Google) and the only devices I used it were my phone (which I signed out of and turned off wifi) and my pc back when I was on windows. I haven’t logged in since switching to Linux…