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I find teens rather cautious about giving out phone numbers, older generation - much less so.

Anyone over the age of 40 (and many younger) will have had a landline, almost all in the phone book. Name, address, and phone all neatly collected, very few were bothered.

Very good point. I had completely forgotten about that practice. Name, address, phone number. Seems surreal.

There's no problem with it in general when it's printed on a dead tree.

When it's available electronically, everything changes

True but that loophole was closed when phone books started to collect mobile phone numbers. Nobody was happy with that so it was changed so that people had to actively opt into being listed. Phone books are now dead and good riddance.

Except that with the advent of mobile billing, and the like, any phone service provider can pull your info from pretty much anywhere in the world.

Which is why Google is asking for a phone number here, they think the account is likely abusing a service, and they want to identify who is using it.

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