this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
375 points (79.4% liked)
Privacy
31609 readers
76 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Can confirm.
Google locked me out of my account for not giving them my phone number. Even though I used the correct password. Even though I verified myself through the recovery email, which has been the same for ages. Even though I wasn't using a VPN or connecting from a public network. Even though there was no reason to think my account or credentials were compromised.
They are, in fact, extorting phone numbers from people.
Thankfully, I don't depend on my google account for anything, but I'm still stuck receiving spam forwarded by gmail, because I can't log in to turn off forwarding. (I'll probably have to filter it out at some point.) I honestly hope they just delete my account after some months without a phone number.
If you can't login they will definitely delete the account sooner or later.
They've been sending out notices recently talking about changes to their account inactivity policy saying just that.
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
Clearly.
Whatever excuse they might have doesn't change the fact that they are extorting phone numbers from people.
So Google will not let me log in to my account unless I provide them my phone number? But at the same time they require a regular log in (at least once a year or every two years), so your account doesn’t get deleted?
I have an old Gmail account, I don’t use anymore, but it’s tied to my name, so I wouldn’t want someone else to use it at some point. I thinks there’s one email client that regularly connects to that account. I hope that will be sufficient to preserve it, but I would not feel comfortable giving them my phone number, when I have no other links to Google services (this may be different, if you use an Android phone anyway).
2 years and it'll be deleted.
I still have a Gmail account but I'm trying better solutions... Maybe my own hosted system. Whether I pay google or a hosting company with open source software is the same money, the latter means privacy
Get your own domain and use migadu.com. The starter plan is $20/year.
For extra privacy get a domain in .de, .be, .fr, or .nl, their registries protect owner data automatically.
If you're also looking for a registrar check out INWX.