It's not necessary to provide your phone number if you don't want to. It does not force you to do that, although for account recovery purposes (getting access b

It's not necessary to provide your phone number if you don't want to. It does not force you to do that, although for account recovery purposes (getting access back to an account if it's compromised), it will bother you once in a while to add your phone number as a recovery mechanism. I see this request coming with plain Gmail and Yahoo Mail too quite often, and just choose to skip it whenever asked.