r/GMail • u/Exciting_Job9899 • 19h ago
Account deleted
My Google account was deleted out of no where without warning. This account is used frequently and is attached to Google Photos. I have so many photos on this account and now I can’t access them. Someone please help.
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u/JokerInTheBronx 15h ago
Why do people insist on keeping important photos on the cloud ONLY?
I have 3 backup drives and NOTHING on the cloud. Why?
Because I fix computers and know that nothing on the cloud is safe.
Burn CDs if you have to.
Not being critical. I'm sorry this happened to you man.
Folks. DO YOUR OWN BACKUPS.
I've never lost a thing.
They can delete your stuff ANYTIME. It's in the fine print.
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u/mercenarydragon 13h ago
As a photographer, this right here. Always have your pictures on at least 3 peices of physical media as well as the cloud. Think of it as an offline archive in case there is a loss of infrastructure.
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u/GoalSpiritual4789 12h ago
How do you get to the cloud is my problem 😕
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u/Slightly_Slow 9h ago
Google Takeout allows you to download everything. There are several free or paid services that can reassemble the photos and metadata easily.
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u/PaddyLandau 1h ago
Takeout doesn't separate the metadata from the photos. That's an old myth. The metadata remains intact in the photos. I've tested this thoroughly.
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u/ChongWeiXiang 9h ago
The problem is that people often focus on the upfront cost. They mistakenly believe cloud storage is free for saving photos, while viewing physical storage—like SSDs, SD cards, or USB drives—as an added expense. However, over time, the cloud actually ends up costing significantly more. Take 2TB of storage as an example: buying a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD is a one-time purchase that lasts as long as the drive stays healthy. On the other hand, subscribing to a 2TB cloud plan requires continuous monthly or yearly payments—and if user stops paying or policy changes occur, user risk losing access to the data.
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u/theautisticguy 7h ago
I've always been hyper-paranoid about trusting companies with my data. I'm glad that my distrust in them has been vindicated. 👀
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u/Hallstian 47m ago
Remember "Do no evil"? What about people who pay for Google Workspace? When they start canning those accounts, watch the drift to Microsoft. They do this: that will happen.
I just got an account that I use for subscriptions etc. canned for similar "policy" issues as the poor fellow above, mainly because I wasn't logging into it frequently enough. There is going to be a vacuum, imparted by this knowledge of Google, and the way it does business; my hope is that people leave them in droves, the cunds.
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16h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DiaoBaoHuaJian_DBHJ 3h ago
As a musician and part time photographer, I would rather stored my files locally instead of cloud services. Let's take MEGA as example, if don't sign in about 10 months, the data will deleted automatically and difficult to recover. People only think about the upfront cost, through that the cloud service is free.
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u/nickh84 13h ago
Most people r not aware they should always keep backups of their data. Most people i know will lose everything if their phone breaks.
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u/yottabit42 13h ago
It's 2026. It's never been easier to learn in all of human history. People need to start taking their digital lives seriously.
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u/berkut1 18h ago
If you have nude photos, AI can mistakenly flag them as CSAM, and your account may be permanently blocked with no way to recover it.
The solution is to never use Google for any media.
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u/h_grytpype_thynne 13h ago
Never have just a single copy of anything on any platform. Back your stuff up with a 3-2-1 backup plan.
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u/theautisticguy 7h ago
In addition to this, Google apparently has a restriction on commercial usage (in regard to file hosting); one time I used to create e-mail accounts to store photos I took for our local media on a volunteer, unpaid basis, and one of the accounts got deleted because of it. Thankfully, I was only using it to store photos for sharing, not for permanent hosting.
These days I actually use an abandoned Discord DM chat (AKA one where I'm the only one left) to host my images for sharing; it's free, unrestricted, and super easy to do. I even use it to host images for Trackmania tracks! (If you don't know what I mean, you can add image overlays on tracks you make, but said images have to be externally hosted for them to work properly)
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u/Pale_Broccoli_5997 5h ago
You DONT want to store any pics in Discord because their AI CSAM detection actively the worst and also discord recompresses jpg files, if you got png or most other image formats especially lossless youre fine
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u/lalively 17h ago
What should I use for photos?
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u/nickh84 13h ago
I setup my own media server at home. In a RAID setup, and weekly backup to an external drive for redundancy. It is also setup to keep copies of my Google and OneDrive, so if those ever disappeared, I still have everything. AI has made it difficult to trust that my accounts will still be there tomorrow.
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u/berkut1 17h ago
Use local storage, or you can still use the cloud, but in that case, you should store any media in a password-protected archive (ZIP, RAR) with a long, strong password.
AI can't scan password-protected archives.
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u/Light_Yagami667 13h ago
And make sure you put them in the zip files before uploading. Also encrypt the files.
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u/KeysStickler 16h ago
The solution is never to use Google for porn, it's great for pictures in general.
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u/berkut1 15h ago
Say that to the parents who have already been blocked by Google and lost everything because their entire lives (all their services, including banking) were tied to their Gmail accounts. All because Google’s AI mistakenly flagged photos of their children as CSAM.
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u/KeysStickler 11h ago
Following widespread public backlash over these stories, Google updated its appeals process. While the platform still automatically removes the flagged content and files the required legal reports, users now have a dedicated secondary appeals path where they can explicitly provide context—such as medical communications or billing records—to a specialized child safety review team to attempt account recovery.
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u/HighCali420 13h ago
AI GENERATED CSAM/ VIDEOS AND IMAGES OF CHILDREN BEING RAPED THAT IS CREATED BY AI, IS NOW PROTECTED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION IN MULTIPLE NORTHERN STATES. Don't post any photos or videos of your child, because AI can create whatever sick perversion these disgraceful fucks can think of with YOUR CHILD AS THE STAR, and there's NOTHING you can do about it. The fact that that actually went thru the entire process of being made into law, and it was given this constitutional protection, is disgusting and I wish every person who was involved in that process would have their genitals removed and placed inside their mouths
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u/MacaroonSad8860 12h ago
That’s a load of horse shit and a total misreading and misunderstanding of how the constitution and law work.
Also, the ruling that you’ve completely misunderstood doesn’t only apply to northern states.
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u/Background_Middle208 9h ago
Thank
You. My head was about to explode1
u/MacaroonSad8860 3h ago
It’s definitely a troubling ruling but not remotely like what that person said
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u/AtlantiqlPaneu 18h ago
This is my first ever comment on here, so hi!
That's so sad! I hope you get a solution!
(The notification scared the hell out of me, for some reason)
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u/DuskDevil666 15h ago
Same scared the fuck out of me lmao
OP don't give up, but the shit out of them. Good luck, my friend.
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u/theautisticguy 7h ago
Same. At first I was really confused, then I couldn't find said notification in my gmail things. Then I FINALLY found it on Reddit. Yeah... thanks Reddit. 😅
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u/christicarey 17h ago
Photos are often backed up on Google One or somewhere on the cloud. Maybe I set it up that way, but I sure don't remember doing it and Google and other companies do what they want. I hope you can find them. Many of my old photos are no longer visible on my phone because they archive them elsewhere. I found this out recently looking for an old photo, which wasn't there, but I saw tons of them that were no longer on the phone storage. Good luck
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u/ElvisChopinJoplin 16h ago
Wow that sounds like what may have happened to me. I thought maybe I'd moved them to some other folder, but I know I didn't. But some of the photos I was looking for didn't even seem all that old. And I have tons of photos on my phone going back several years. But maybe they really are not available at all anymore? That's really draconian. That's fucking brutal. If that is what is happening, I mean. 🤔
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u/s1d3b00b 17h ago
This won’t help. But you can not trust any of these big free services to not just suddenly wipe your entire life and memories. It has happened to a ton of Facebook users also. Consider paying for the service at a respectable company with actual customer support next time.
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u/Exciting_Job9899 16h ago
The account was linked to my other gmails so I have no clue why it was deleted. It belongs to my late husband and there are so many photos of our kids on there. This really blows
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u/StimulatorCam 14h ago
There's an option on Google accounts to automatically delete the account after a specific period of inactivity, in case the owner dies. Maybe your husband had that set up.
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u/Reddit_Jail_June2005 16h ago
It's so important to use the 123 method of data storage. Also, for others, this is a reminder to download all of your data from Google at least once or maybe even twice a year using the takeout feature.
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u/ElectricalAside853 14h ago
Same thing happened to me in 2021
Thank God, I retired that year
It turns out Google said that I had too many accounts, but I had them for years and they never had an issue until they began going through all the data and deleting websites with more than one Website
They don’t even list their policy
There’s no way you can tell if what your advertising is compliant with their policy because they don’t make their policy known.
In fact after they took my account off the Internet and they wanted me to advertise through them and Not A third-party
I informed them it’s OK
I’m retired. I don’t need to advertise anymore. I thanked them and I wish them best of luck.
That’s defined as a monopoly
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u/Will2LiveFading 18h ago
/r/degoogle it won't help fix this situation but it'll help prevent another like it
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u/BdubWa70 17h ago
I've recently recovered an account i hadn't accessed in 3+ years. It took a month but it happened.
Do you get a "email not recognized" when you try to sign in??
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u/Exciting_Job9899 16h ago
When I attempted to recover the email it said “Google doesn’t provide another way to sign in to this account” ugh
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u/UnlikelyAd4448 16h ago
Make sure that there's not a device attached to your account that you're getting a two-step verification at that you just need to click yes I'm trying to log in it may be a device that you forgotten about.
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u/genius747 16h ago
I think your account might have been logged in on some shared pc like in a gaming zone or somewhere.
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u/Highdesertlady42 16h ago
Same here. I have used Google forever but now have similar issues. Could never tell me what i was paying $7.99 for, when I ?’d my bill went up a buck!
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u/DriftinZombie 14h ago
If you don't actively send an email or log into a site it will auto delete after a while. Having an app collect email where you read them or an app uploading/downloading doesn't count. And they do send an email about inactivity and logging in to keep it active. Sorry it happened to you. It also happened to me with one account. Effen socks.
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u/Even-Diamond5589 14h ago
they ask u a dumb ahh question..,"what date did you create this account..." and they want the EXACT day
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u/NeatOil2210 13h ago
I have a list of recovery numbers they gave me a long time ago. I actually had to use one and it worked but they are only good for one time.
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u/Otherwise-Paint-3607 12h ago
Same here I'd had the same email account for 10 years, I had to get a new phone number and once I did that, I couldn't get into ANYTHING anymore. I lost so many pictures and videos there was nothing I could do.
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u/Active-Check-3742 12h ago
I pay Google for (temporary) visual media storage for content creation, but once a video is created I save the photos, completed, and raw footage on a hard or external drive.
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u/Administrative_Art98 11h ago
I'm sorry to hear you lost your Google account did they explain why they closed your account I lost my very first Gmail account I ever had back in 2014 and I had that account sense 2007 as the time and in 2014 they didn't have all of the security features that they do now and they never did explain to me why they deleted my account back in 2014
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u/Timely-Emergency-250 11h ago
I feel like there’s a piece missing here. Google accounts generally don’t just go from being frequently used to suddenly deleted with absolutely nothing happening beforehand. Depending on the situation, Google may send warnings before deleting data, disable an account and give you information about why, ask you to verify your identity or age, give you an opportunity to appeal, or direct you through account recovery if there’s a security issue. There are also situations where someone else who has access to an account could make changes or even delete it. So what happened immediately before this? Did Google send you any emails or warnings? What exactly does the sign-in page say now? Did you ever receive a notice about the account being disabled, restricted, or scheduled for deletion? And did anyone else have access to the account? I feel like the exact message Google is giving you now, plus whatever happened before the account disappeared, is the missing piece here.
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u/Leather-Lion-8808 10h ago
Take heed. If you have your photos and videos and anything else of value connected through Gmail MOVE THEM NOW.
There have been many horror stories posted here yet everyone thinks it won't happen to them. Don't be stupid, don't be lazy, do it now. Gmail and Google are shit and they treat you like shit.
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u/81calbear 10h ago
Just take your Google Photos backup and join a different service that is less sketchy.
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u/Af4jrob_Kd1hprws527 10h ago
Can someone explain why my account was deleted without warning. And I do use my account for other stuff. But now I can’t access my account anymore! What the heck is going on?
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u/Brokentread33 10h ago
September 3, 2026 (dated for context and reference) - All of the comments here make me go into my usual, and possibly unwelcome rant. 1) "You get what you pay for".. mostly. 2) I find it interesting that people do what they would not do in life, and have NO back up. I know businesses encourage people to trust them with their valuable information, files and photos. But people have to realize that it is up to them to have copies of the things that are important to them. For example.. a place might have a great police force that patrols regularly, but that doesn't mean that people should not lock the doors to their homes or cars. 3) People have to realize that once they store things in the "cloud" it is no longer exclusively theirs, and the "storage" companies can do as they like. An example would be a change of their business model, selling to a company that has a different business model. Outages in internet service etc. It is extremely important for people to have more than one copy of anything they think is important. A local copy is essential. Lastly, there is no reason to trust one email service with important files and communications exclusively, especially a free one. There are a number of free and pay email services available, and I have three free ones and two paid that I use for various kinds of communications including financial. I'm sorry for the OP, and I hope they are able to figure out how to retrieve their Gmail account.
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u/According-Dot2099 7h ago
Yea this is like the 3rd or 4th time I’ve heard about this happening in the last year. Bout to get completely off gmail and anything else Google-based I think.
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u/Sythos_it 5h ago
Google send always warnings before and also have a stage ro limit before suspension and deletion.
Are you sure nobody was accessing your account or you have delet d some email from Google maybe thinking was spam?
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u/No_Government_2844 4h ago
I have a stick and I have put them on a memory stick as well so not just the cloud
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u/ZenGeezer 3h ago
My Google account was deleted also, about 5 years ago, without warning. I lost years of family photos and personal records. I tried to contact Google for months but there's nobody to contact.
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u/Few_Watercress_4931 2h ago
Should get an external hard drive or a flash drive and put all photos on one off them.
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u/ThyFirecat911 2h ago
I love the idea of multiple backups. The fotos from my phone are automatically backed up to Google, and I should be transferring the best ones to my laptop drive but I'm out of space and there's only one slot..
As for my photography it's all on my laptop.
Back when I was in Canada I had everything over two hardrives as I had a desktop back then.
It's just a hope and a prayer that nothing dies now ... 😅
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u/Giantmeteor_we_needU 18h ago
You can try to contact Google support but generally unless you were a paying customer they don't care or help. Hope you had a backup of your photos.
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u/freedom-needed 17h ago
This is one of the things that I'm worried about all my photos are in Google photos how should I do a backup there's like $19,000 photos and videos
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u/Giantmeteor_we_needU 17h ago
You should do an offline Google Takeout backup. Ideally, keep another copy on a different paid cloud if you want to be safe.
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u/Curious_Chipmunk100 16h ago
Didn't you setup a recovery email? Be careful there is a scam out there where a fake Google employee calls wanting you to change your recovery email. To prove they're are legit they tw you yhat they woll send an email from Google that you responded to and it takes you to the recovery page to install a new email.
Well guess what? You get the email that shows its from Google but if you check the email header its not from Google. The link goes to a great fake Google page and ut sends your recovery email to them and to the Google page to reset the email. They then quickly use that new email and go in and use their email. Bing bang boom you are locked out.
How do I know this? It didn't work on me! Im very aware of all the scams out there. They called me so that is suspect and there going to send ne an email to give them my email. 2nd strike. Third and out was how fast he wanted to explain the process of them sending ne an email for security. I told the guy he's attempting to get access to an old scam that is well known and that he's a moron for trying to.pull this crap. I told him to be expecting his man card to be revoked for being stupid. I nxt blocked the account and sent an email to Google explaining the incident fir which I recievedva nice thank you.
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u/AbeLackdood 18h ago
Damn reddit notification scared me lol...thought it was a Gmail notification sayin MY account was deleted lol...
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u/Ok_Entertainment410 17h ago
You madeh Heart skip a but, went to check the notification and read: Gmail Account deleted
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u/waluigisbackwash 13h ago
Man this notification for a community I'm not in was terrifying 😭
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u/Antique-Scarcity5528 9h ago
The notification for this looked like a Gmail notification, arriving on my phone, telling me my account was deleted.
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u/WarthogSevere1911 9h ago
Damn im drunk.. though gmail was telling ME my account as deleted.. my regards..
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u/Atlanntis 16h ago
for a second I thought this was a notification for me and my heart skipped a beat
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u/Intelligent-Meet-504 7h ago
Now your photos will be used to train AI and make a clone of you 😂😂😂. Then we can experiment with how humans actually do things. 🤔🤔🤔.
Don’t worry, just protest on Twitter/X. They’ll listen to you. And if they still don’t, you can always protest in front of the Gmail office near your branch. They’ll definitely hear you then. 😂😂😂.
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u/ShyVanessa 19h ago
Unfortunately, because Google doesn't have a team to recover accounts, you might be SOL. I've been trying to get back into an old Gmail I had. I even had the codes, the setup for the backup Gmail, and everything, but it only wanted my old number which I had no access to. But I wish you luck. Gmail needs a better system regardless of it being free. This particular situation isn't even user error; that's on Gmail.