Although Gmail accounts are very popular even for business use, there are users who wish to permanently delete one or more accounts. In this article, we will see how to permanently delete them.
For those wondering why someone would want to delete a free Gmail account, we will tell them that there are a lot of cases for someone to want to do this. Old emails from childhood, such as mikri_trelokampero04.gmail.com, have not been put into the adult world. Or emails from a terminated professional activity that do not need to be somewhere in some corner of the vast internet, with the risk of being leaked at any moment.
But, let's see the guide on how to delete your Gmail account, forever.
Things to do first
Before deleting your Gmail, you should make sure that this email address is no longer associated with your bank, Amazon, eBay, work, or other important accounts, because there will be no way for messages sent to your email address to be forwarded once it is deleted. So, go to your most important accounts first and change their contact email addresses, if any of them are associated with the Gmail being removed.
The next thing you need to do, if you want to, is download all the important emails from your Gmail account. Google has a built-in tool for doing this. It’s called “Download Your Data.” Go to it, then uncheck all the boxes except “Mail.” (You can click the “Select None” box, then simply click the X next to Mail to select it.) You can also choose to only save emails under certain labels. Just click the “All Messages” button next to the word “Mail” to choose which labels to download.
Once you're ready, click Next, then follow the instructions to save your inbox contents.
Deleting your Gmail account
1. Sign in to your Google account using any of Google's services (you can also use Gmail.), then click on your Google profile picture (top right) and select "My Account".
2. On the My Account screen, click "Delete your account or services.".
3. On the next screen, scroll down until you reach the heading "Delete your account or services" and then click the "Delete products" button and log back in to your Gmail account for the last time.
You'll see a list of Google services linked to your account that you can delete. (It's good to know this list in case you want to delete other Google services in the future.)
4. Click the trash can icon next to “Gmail,” then when prompted, enter an email address so that your other Google accounts – like Drive and so on – can remain active. Your alternate email address cannot be another Gmail address.
Once this is done, you will receive an email at the address you entered, asking you to click a link to confirm that you really want to delete your Gmail account forever.
5. Click the link, then read the warning message from Google telling you that it is not your usual “blah blah” text. The most important thing to note here is that if you were using this Gmail email address as a recovery address for your bank account, important service accounts, etc. then you will no longer be able to access that information.
6. So, now that you have considered all the implications, you are ready to delete your account. If you insist, then check the box at the bottom of the “blah blah” window and select “Delete Gmail”.
That's it! You no longer have access to your Gmail account, since it has been permanently deleted (according to Google). If you have not deleted the other services of this account, then you will still have access to them despite deleting the Gmail address. Access will be through the email address you have registered in step 4.
