"Edit: Account recovered. I used chromium to login (which I never do) and then back to Firefox"
How can google keep getting away with this? MS got into trouble with IE with much less.
Then they expanded it to the app store - some apps, even ones that don't seem to need to be age restricted - now require I verify my age in the same way. I just give them the middle finger and manually install the APKs for those apps.
Unfortunately, no way to get around the YouTube restriction though.
Google having a complete monopoly on this stuff has got to end at some point. They have way too much power over what are now pretty mainstream services to the internet, especially since they cannot be completed with by most companies, even those with adequate funding and reach.
Wasn't this added because of some EU law? It seems that YouTube's interpretation was that asking this is the opposite of illegal, actually legally required.
I'll give it a try though, thanks. There are some High Boi videos I still haven't seen :|
If you're not trusted, then any phone number you give shouldn't be trusted, either.
If you're trusted enough to be let in when you give a phone number, then you should be trusted enough to be let in without it, and then asked for a phone number, if one is really needed for 2FA.
I assume this restriction is against automation. As a complete guess on the heuristics: If the phone number you gave them is a "virtual" one, you are out. If it was used too frequently for recovery, you are out. If they are already familiar with it as belonging to someone else who is unlikely to also own the current account, you are out.
With those heuristics you need to provide a "fresh" phone number that likely belongs to a real person and costs real money to purchase and you are unlikely to want to "burn" for just 5 out of 5,000,000 of your automated attempts.