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Comment by michaelisaok | Hacker News Reader

Even though you can remove SMS as a 2FA, it looks like Google still asks for an email and phone for "Account recovery options". Probably should remove that as well?

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Yes, you should. They demand phones because normal users who aren't being guided through the setup would be likely to lock themselves out of their account without it, but if you know what you're doing you can eliminate the phone dependency.

Or create an email account. It's impossible to sign up to any web email service to be able to send email not just receive if you don't have a phone.

I needed an untraceable email to send from for reasons I won't go into but couldn't create one.

If you're poor but need a webmail account you need a phone. You can't even put in a fake number since you need to reply to the approval link setup email. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, everyone one I tried all require a phone.

Recently I was able to create a "test" gmail account without using a phone number, just leave the fields blank and hit continue.

They may allow you to do that. If you are on an IP that they deem not trustable enough, like if you are on a dynamic IP or come from the wrong country, they'll refuse to create the account without some phone verification (to hinder spammers)

Pay someone on fiver with bitcoin to give you a few email accounts. Problem solved. (Make sure to use Tor and mix the coins.)

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