How to find forgotten gmail accounts

A little over two months ago, Google announced that it plans to delete any accounts that haven’t been used in two years (with Some exceptions, such as accounts with YouTube videos). Well, just today, I received an email from Google warning me that accounts that have not been accessed for two years will already be eligible for deletion starting December 1st, 2023.

I’ve been wandering around Google Apps for quite some time now, and it occurred to me that I… could You probably have unused Google Accounts that I haven’t used in years – which, if I don’t check them, may contain content I’d like to save. I knew I had three active Google accounts, and thought I had at least one other account that I hadn’t visited in a while, but I wasn’t entirely sure if there were any others.

Apparently, there is at least one way to try to find this out: by using Google’s Find Your Email page. This looks for any Google Accounts associated with an email address or phone number that you may have entered as a “recovery” account – one that can be used to verify your identity if you lose your password to another Google Account.

And sure enough – I was shown a list of four accounts, three of which were my active accounts but one of which I had in full forgotten. It was originally created as a test account for a job I had about six or seven years ago and haven’t used it since.

So what happens if you’re suddenly presented with an old Google account — and have no idea what the password is? Here is what happened in my case:

It turned out that there was nothing of value on that account, but I was glad I was able to check it out just in case before Google erased it.

Two more things to note. First, it’s a good idea to use the Find Your Email page to check all active email addresses or phone numbers you may have used as recovery references. You can also take a look around for any other apps you may have used to tag other Gmail accounts. For example, just for hell, I checked my password manager and found another Google account that wasn’t listed with the others because the phone number associated with it was no longer in use. Since I still had the password, it wasn’t hard to go in and change the recovery phone number so it was current.

Secondly, this is a good reason not to neglect adding a recovery phone number And The email address for each of your Google accounts. You never know when they might come in handy. You can find instructions on how to do this here.