Ask HN: What to do when websites ask for cell number to create login?
This is becoming more and more common and now The ssa is requiring it to access my account, how can I avoid giving it out?
The good news is that there are some options if you don't want to give out your phone number. 1) Give out a fake phone number such as 555-555-5555. This works assuming you don't need to verify the phone number. 2) Sign up for a google voice account and pick a phone number. You can get texts and receive voice mail and read them through email or by going to google.com/voice
For example, I have multiple user ids in google for each of my businesses but I give them all my same phone number for the purpose of recovery. Now gmail does not have to do too much effort to equate the owner of all this accounts to be one person.
Now assume, you give the same number to linked, facebook and google.
Now you no longer need complex machine learning algorithms to match your profiles across platforms. The unified profile has all your commercial, personal and career info in one place. Ad trackers will love that! If you use the cell number in walmart etc, thats an added bonus.
More importantly: Most people will have multiple email accounts but rarely more than one cell number. So it is much easier to identify the individual.
Done.
Same deal with credit cards -- use privacy.com.