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  • Hacker News
  • This is an outrageous privacy invasion and if it's not illegal already, it should be.
    by Scaled
  • Big Tech loves to shift cost to others while leveraging the value. In this case Google is using the phone companies to positively identify each and every phone, which is mostly true in many countries.
    by MiroslavPokorny
  • Our corporate policy doesn't allow personal phones to be linked to corp accounts, for obvious reasons. We have no idea what kind of security your personal phone number has setup, nor do we compensate employees for their personal phones, nor do we want corporate communications happening on your personal device (work/life separation).

    If the vendor is unable to comply, all we're using them for is email. Time to look elsewhere.

    by exabrial
  • Very unexpected behavior, esp for those with several accounts and phone numbers, intending to keep them separate for security or other reasons.
    by jamiesonbecker
  • The biggest player in ad tech also being the biggest provider of mobile phone operating systems and web browser and web search and email services was only ever going to end up this way. I'm not a big fan of regulation but at some point a single corporate entity should not be allowed to control all of the things.
    by SoftTalker
  • That's why I stay away from trying Gemini or doing anything much with Google until I still host my main gmail account there. One misstep and I'll find myself locked out. Because it's Google's job to spy on everyone, if I have other accounts there, those will also locked out too ("oh! you're trying to circumvent our ban? we noticed!" kind of a thing). Then the only recourse from what I understand is to make an HN post and hope it makes it to the front page and someone from Google who knows someone else at Google will help you.
    by rdtsc
  • It really bothers me that every dick and jane website has normalized asking for your personal phone number. It's the first thing they ask when you sign up. At this point your phone number has become your social security number of the internet.

    I don't care if fighting fraud is hard for you. Figure it out without stripping away my privacy.

    by declan_roberts
  • Google is probably the most aggressive anti-privacy big tech company currently operating.

    No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.

    The requirement to have a mobile device to scan a QR code to verify that you're human. Reverse SMS verification, where you have to send an SMS rather than receive a verification code. You think of signing up using a VPN server in another country? The phone number you use to send the SMS from must also be from that country.

    Not being able to watch YouTube videos when using VPN - without signing in to a Google account, all under the guise of "bot protection."

    Gemini not working in 3/4 of cases when using VPN.

    It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.

    I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.

    PS. The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google

    by maxo133

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