Hacker News Reader

Once you set up 2fa via their code generator, you can remove the phone number from your account.

Or use a throwaway phone number, then remove the phone number.

They verify your phone number.

Absolutely not true at least from France. They severely insist you provide one, but if not they can Auth you from another mail address.

This is not the case when creating a new account from an Android device.

It is not true anywhere. GP is simply talking out of his ass.

There was definitely a time, maybe a few years ago in the 2013-2014 range, when opening a new Gmail account required a phone number to activate[1]. The rule wasn't applied to every one, it was based on some heuristic or another.

Though, amusingly enough, you could use a Google Voice number and there was no limit to the number of accounts one number could activate (at least not that I noticed).

1 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Google-Yah...

The reason why I make my throwaway email accounts with gmx.com is because when I tried to create Google or yahoo addresses they both required a phone number. Yes, I am aware that wasn't a requirement 10 years ago. You also got my gender wrong.