You’re absolutely right on that last part. Making phone numbers required for signing up was only nominally to improve security. Overall, it’s a net negative fo

You’re absolutely right on that last part. Making phone numbers required for signing up was only nominally to improve security. Overall, it’s a net negative for privacy and security, and only benefits the service provider by allowing them to track you (they can buy data on that phone number and create a profile on you) + reducing the number of people calling/emailing them because the user is locked out of their account.