Gmail – Will the Gmail account be inactivated if I only access it via POP3

gmailpop3

I created two accounts for my little kids to act as memoirs repositories and in theory nobody will need to access the accounts for the next 18 years or so. The idea is just to send cool stuff there and give them access once they grow up (assuming Gmail will still exist).

If I configure my personal main Gmail account to get mail from those 2 accounts via POP3, will that be enough to prevent Google from disabling them due to inactivity?

Put in another way, is a POP3 account login equivalent to a web Gmail login (as far as this question is concerned)?

Best Answer

Google's Program Policies page says "Google may terminate your account in accordance with the terms of service if you fail to login to your account for a period of nine months." That's "may," not "will," and it doesn't answer whether POP3 access counts as "active."

But you can use Google's Inactive Account Manager to set up alerts for inactivity. You can also set it to grant someone access to download some or all of the account's data if the alert goes unheeded.