I get how extremely frustrating and angering this must be! I’d recommend chatting with Apple Support or calling Apple Support first, since there’s no way to do

I get how extremely frustrating and angering this must be! I’d recommend chatting with Apple Support or calling Apple Support first, since there’s no way to do anything similar with Google (AFAIK). Not that this can prevent such an occurrence for others, but my guess is that providing a phone number while registering for Google services and verifying that number makes the user more trustworthy to Google than otherwise. This is a big compromise on privacy for someone like me (and I’ve anyway switched to other providers), but anyone who’s tied to Gmail/Google and does not want to use paid and better alternatives could probably benefit from this.