For those who have signed up for Neopets with gmail accounts

[cuddlypanda]

It was announced on New York Times that later this year (in December), Google will begin deleting inactive accounts that have not been used in at least two years.

Screenshots and quotes from the article are below:

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I thought I'd post about this here, since unfortunately Neopets support seems to require access to original email accounts, and this can be made more difficult once Google starts removing those that are inactive.

[Fiore]

Not sure if you'd be able to recreate the email either since most email providers are starting to prevent that as well.

[♥ Sophi ♥]

Could be obvious, but just to make sure, are hotmail mails safe? Is it only Gmail affected?

[I_royalty_I]

I saw a similar article sometime last week. Could be some interesting opportunity to find unregs that are gmail. Right now it’s just a hard pass cuz they don’t purge.. yet

Not sure if you'd be able to recreate the email either since most email providers are starting to prevent that as well.

This isn’t true, I’ve been able to recreate tons of old emails. They just have to actually be purged from the mail server. Different companies have different policies on how long they retain data and all the kinds fun stuff.

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Could be obvious, but just to make sure, are hotmail mails safe? Is it only Gmail affected?

hotmail and yahoo account purge inactive accounts already and have been doing it for a LONG time. Most email providers do.

[j03]

Could be obvious, but just to make sure, are hotmail mails safe? Is it only Gmail affected?

Two different services, so you might want to look up if Hotmail/Microsoft purges their emails.

I wish the window was a little longer than 2 years for this... I can see this being a big problem for Google if they really follow through with this.

[Synth Salazzle]

I have like literally 20 emails I use and alternate between and I literally found a shell I was building and now I'm back on neopets .com it looks like tony P missed one.

[Fiore]

There's a few email accounts that "don't exist" but when you try to recreate them they're taken. You think it could be a glitch or they're not fully purged from the system?

I know for a fact that a few Hotmail accounts of mine were purged YEARS ago but I'm unable to recreate them *shrug*

[gobblegum]

RIP to those twenty something emails I used. Probably a good thing for some of them. I remember making cringey ones after I ran out of ideas for names lol.

[Ice]

There's a few email accounts that "don't exist" but when you try to recreate them they're taken. You think it could be a glitch or they're not fully purged from the system?

I know for a fact that a few Hotmail accounts of mine were purged YEARS ago but I'm unable to recreate them *shrug*

Definitely one or the other, or just an intended aftereffect I would say. Across the board some providers will block out deleted/purged emails from creation, maybe forever or maybe through a certain time period. I would say it's rarely clearly stated what the block out on recreating purged emails are... perhaps for a privacy/safety issue they make them uncreateable or their deletion system just sucks. 🤡

[PineNut]

Likely a large class-action lawsuit if Google truly just purges "2 years+ of inactivity on email-accounts."

There's a lot more lucrative things than a Neopets account/email that would be available if that actually happens. It won't be that simple and this isn't the site to preach basic security...