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Comment by sdevonoes | Hacker News Reader

They ask a phone number to sign up. WTF?

I signed up with openai a while ago and I didn’t need to provide any phone number…. I wanna delete my open ai account, but then I cannot use claude without a phone?

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It’s a way to mitigate bot accounts. Arguably not the best way, arguably not the right cost/benefit, but all of these services see massive bot traffic and are in a constant battle.

If you sign up with a Google account you don't need to give them a phone number. I realize the irony here.

When did you sign up for OpenAI? They been requiring a phone sign the very first betas

Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's unusual and harmful to privacy to require a phone number.

I’m not disagreeing with you but I highly suggest getting something like a burner number. Google Voice and Twilio usually work for me, but sometimes they are flagged VOIP and blocked.

As you say, it's sort of a cat-and-mouse game, and I'd rather not play it. Fortunately, there are plenty of competitors that don't require a phone number.

Most places that ask for a phone number refuse to accept Google Voice or Twilio phone numbers. It's specifically to guarantee you have a cell-phone assigned number. Can anyone confirm whether Anthropic allows Google Voice or Twilio numbers?

Unfortunately it became so common we don’t even care anymore, one of those things that normalized

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