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Asking for a phone number seems pretty valid. The number of times people forget their password, or accidentally type it into a phishing site, or re-use passwor

Asking for a phone number seems pretty valid. The number of times people forget their password, or accidentally type it into a phishing site, or re-use passwords across different websites where one of them (e.g. Yahoo) get breached.... Without a recovery phone number, these people are hosed - and they've lost data, photos, contacts, email, their entire digital life etc. That's a pretty poor user experience. So most people are like - yeah, OK, that sounds reasonable, let me put a phone number I can access just in case somebody hacks my account. NB: I work for Google, but I don't speak for them here in any official capacity.

divbit 10y ago
> Asking for a phone number seems pretty valid. I agree with your reasoning that for the vast majority of casual users it is useful (and maybe gmail is only intended for casual users). Otoh, there are countries where you could be punished for speaking your mind via en e-mail account that is linked to you (say by phone number) or from that e-mail account being linked to you via your using it to sign up for another service. For example, in the US one could conceivably be punished (or at least face an expensive court battle) for publishing certain types of software see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States from an e-mail address linked to you
omginternets 10y ago
The security considerations are valid, but this is missing the point. The point is rather that google is in the business of selling personal information, and that telephone numbers are valuable personal information. As such, some people don't trust google with this information despite the valid pretext.