Gmail prompt to provide phone number sounds like a threat
You could lose access to your X years of Gmail history with 2FA enabled if you lose your phone.
This reminds me Blizzard forces their users to use 2FA with their own app if you want to unlock all the features on World of Warcraft, so you are forced to install the blizzard app on your personal smartphone device...
I wonder if it works in an Android VM. The shittier thing they've done is requiring a non-prepaid number for Overwatch 2, locking out people who can't afford anything else... And some regions as well.
I don't think that's true, I don't have the app and I was able to play SC2 not that long ago. I think you can disable 2FA in account settings.
I said "unlock all the features on World of Warcraft". If you disable 2FA, you can't use all the features.
Have you people never heard of a phone book? Phone numbers aren't sensitive information. If they want to scrape your phone number they can legally and trivially do so through public data sources. Google does plenty of sketchy things around privacy, but this isn't one of them, it's just about security.
Creating a new Google account isn't even possible without a phone number anymore. I had a new account which I didn't use in a while and it decided I need some old phone number to confirm my log in. There's no way to log in, recover or delete the account. There's no way I'm putting my daily account to that risk by giving them whatever phone number I have now
I created a new Google account for testing purposes with some oauth clients, and I only provided my work email, didn't ask me any phone number.
BuT cOrPoRaTiOnS tRaCk YoUr LoCaTiOn If yOu GiVe ThEm YouR nUmBeR
Like they'd need your phone number to do that when you probably already have a smartphone with Facebook installed
i was pointing at lay-user of smartphones that don't want to give facebook or google their phone number while they are already spied on by countless companies with Google and Meta among them,
same people probably have pasted some appropriate clause on their facebook
Using someone else's computer for receiving your mail... That's quite cringe !
With all do respect friend, I'm assuming most of us here that really care about privacy ditched Gmail very early in our privacy journey. I think virtually every policy Google enforces, including phone validation has some element of data collection in mind. We can debate whether providing the phone number is an information grab or a security measure, but I'm fairly certain it's both to some degree. If one cares enough about privacy to post in this community please start looking for a privacy respecting email provider, then start abandoning Google services like the plague at a pace you can tolerate. Don't move too fast on your journey, the inconvenience is rough, but liberating your digital life is priceless one step at a time.
