I would love a way to anonymously purchase apps, but I'm not even asking for that much accomodation. I would tolerate giving Apple billing information to purch

I would love a way to anonymously purchase apps, but I'm not even asking for that much accomodation. I would tolerate giving Apple billing information to purchase an app. I don't understand why I need billing information to download a free app that doesn't cost any money. There's no transaction for Apple to verify. And I don't understand why I need to give Apple a phone number of any of this. I'm not even asking for an ideal world, just a very slightly less crappy one; Apple objectively does not need my phone number to let me hit a download link. That serves no purpose, it's a completely unrelated step to the task I'm trying to perform.