πππ
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
760 points (99.2% liked)
Privacy
46045 readers
989 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
have been deleted
recover
π
At least write "is scheduled to be deleted" to make the lie not as obvious.
I assume that the account is not usable after this. So it is a logical delete and the physical delete is scheduled. I don't know what would be a better way to phrase it, that would not confuse the users.
I am not trying to defend google, I just had similar UX issues at work.
Correct. Google is banking on users getting withdrawl and crawling back. They all do the same thing, like Meta products. They give you 30 days before deletion because they know most people are addicted and will recover their accounts.
load more comments
(2 replies)
It's like how most people call moving a file into the trash can "deleting." It is deleted (in a sense), but you can still recover it if you want before the trash can gets emptied.
Or like how even you can actually delet a file from the disk but still be able to recover it before the disk space is overwritten by other files. I'm not saying that this is what Google does when you recover a freshly deleted account (most likely not), but what I'm trying to say with these two examples is that being able to be recovered is not a contradiction with having been deleted
Also I don't get why you take problem with this. It's not like it's another loop to jump through to get to delete the account?
load more comments
(6 replies)
'removed from public access, but retained for our own or for legal purposes'
Your data has been "deleted".
No problem
( Ν‘Β° ΝΚ Ν‘Β°)
NSFW isn't only porn. Use Swisscows as search engine and you'll understand why it isn't recommend to block NSFW if you aren't a young kid.
The other day I tried making a google account for an assignment my prof wanted (bro wanted presentation to be specifically on google slides and video uploaded on youtube). Google now required you to have a physical smartphone to make an account, you have to press a button that sends some kind of api that sends google an sms from your phone.
So I just told my friend to upload it for me
That's some bullshit. Google Classroom should be included by the district if they want you to use Google apps.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
That takes me back. Been several years for me. Congratulations
Thanks, and nice going!
This would be me if only there was some way to easily determine where I have used my @gmail address in the past 20 years. I have already set up another address that I own myself and have moved a bunch of stuff over, but I don't want to lose access to the rest of my accounts tied to my Gmail address.
Although I suppose I could go through my Keepass and list all logins that use my gmail, then chip away at that....
You can setup a rule in Gmail, and tag them when they get to your new inbox. Use Gmail to add a junk CC, or something if the new provider doesn't have strong automation capabilities.
Then use the tags to go back and change the email on file (if necessary).
After a year if they haven't contacted you then they obviously aren't that important.
I found a lot of emails but I didn't find a lot of emails I cared about enough to update when I did this.
This is a great idea.
I'm using Thunderbird with IMAP to my own email server for my new email, but I can totally see something like that working to make the transition work. Thanks!
load more comments
(4 replies)
Congratulations. I have mine still active for 2 years for email forwarding...I think I should have caught all residual services by now and switched the email adress for them. Photos are transferred to selfhosted Immich, Files on nextcloud and Filen. Maybe I should find some time for the final deletion then?
I see it as fate. I switched credit cards and wanted to register my new one on Meta but their system would not let me enter a Canadian postal code. My solution is to let the account expire in April (due to non-account payment because the credit card on file no longer exists) and sell my Quest 3s, otherwise they would have had me for another year. My days of troubleshooting or trying to get around bad design are over. Life is too short and VR, while fun, isn't fun enough for me to make the time sacrifices required to keep going. The bloom is off of the VR rose.
load more comments
(1 replies)
That's something to do while we still can, Instagram doesn't let me delete my own account :/ Tried reaching the support multiple times, I've been completely ignored
i used an instagram scraper tool with an account, at some point they suspended the account and required my ID. I obviously refused and just let it rot, at some point they deleted my account.
After how much time? I was banned because of using third party client, I did the kyc process at the time because I wanted to delete the account but still I could not access...
It's been years for me and they didn't delete it yet.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I am in the process of figuring out which things are still tied to my old Google email address (I have been forwarding my emails from it for the last year and changing each account to unique aliases as I find them) so I can finally delete it for good.
Congratulations. Starting this year i got rid of facebook account but not completely because messenger is probably most popular messaging app in my country for some reason but still it is a great feeling
I've done the same. Removing messenger is impossible in Poland
Thatβs gotta be infuriating.
Congratulations!!!
Iβm getting closer and closer to this goal myself.
Good luck! I just decided to rip the bandage off instead of going through my accounts. I've been self-hosting for several years now, and I have replacements for all Google apps. The only thing I'd been using it for was YouTube, but that site is definitely compromising for people with certain political opinions.
I'm working towards doing this. It'll take a bit of setting up though
My children's schools and after-school extracurricular clubs (including ones offered by the local police department) still are held hostage by Alphabet, forcing me to also maintain an account with them. But... I don't need to use it for anything else.
old google accounts that have been regularly used for their entire existence are whitelisted by youtube's age assurance, because if the google account is beyond like...10 years old and has been getting continuous use the entire time then there's no way it belongs to a kid anymore
that's why I kind of regret deleting my older Gmail addresses, the one I use to watch youtube is still pretty old over 15 years. but I had one google account that would be 19 years old by now
load more comments
(9 replies)
I'd suggest to recover your account and burn it first: Register in a hell amount of random services for a few weeks to make it confuse about you, so their data about you will be imprecise which has no much value for them.
BUT... don't be too obvious, make it look like a legit behavior. We must assume they can spot a timestamp when you started burning it.
I say that because I did the same, straight deleted my Google account, but I wish I realized it'd be better to burn it first.
Anyway, not a mandatory thing, your data will become useless eventually, up to date data is more valuable for them than outdated data. They probably just ignore/delete old deleted accounts indeed, since it has each time less updated info.
I would never dare to do that, sadly. My job keeps me from attempting such a risky maneuver.
Have you considered slowly transitioning to another account/service?
Iβve been going through my google account for almost a year now, taking my time to really deal with all that stuff so I can close it for good.
load more comments
(2 replies)
What are the gmail replacement options?
Any small-to-medium paid email hoster. Because if not paid, you are the product. And large ones usually want both, your money and your data/advertising.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I use proton and itβs been solid
I use mailbox.org, and it's been good. I used tutanota for a while, but the fact that I couldn't use any email clients (they have their own now I've heard) made me switch. It's also why I didn't go with Proton, since you have to pay the $10/mo plan (I think) to do it with them.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next βΊ