Didn't appear to be on the advertising side of things (yet...), but I had a similar experience when renewing some free Azure credits (from Microsoft Dreamspark

Didn't appear to be on the advertising side of things (yet...), but I had a similar experience when renewing some free Azure credits (from Microsoft Dreamspark or whatever they're calling it now). I kinda figured it was just verifying I was a human, but I've provisioned 10~ or so other VPSes and dedicated servers with a few different providers and never got a phonecall so it was unexpected.