Google is probably the most aggressive anti-privacy big tech company currently operating.
No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.
The requirement to have a mobile device to scan a QR code to verify that you're human. Reverse SMS verification, where you have to send an SMS rather than receive a verification code. You think of signing up using a VPN server in another country? The phone number you use to send the SMS from must also be from that country.
Not being able to watch YouTube videos when using VPN - without signing in to a Google account, all under the guise of "bot protection."
Gemini not working in 3/4 of cases when using VPN.
It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.
I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.
PS. The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google
Trying to fight it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. I carry two phones now - since I have my "privacy" enabled phone that basically has nothing on it. Email, messages, weather app and a few privacy enabled browsers. My other phone has all my "faux" google stuff on it. Maps, gmail, banking apps, my authenticator apps, music apps, etc.
Even then, these can all be tied together fairly easy, but just trying to make it harder to keep my data private is such a battle; and friends always ask me why I spend so much time trying to keep myself anonymous when in 2026 its virtually impossible to do so.
I always tell them:
“Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” (To live well is to live concealed.)
Nothing like that is required, if you see them on same mobile tower or wifi networks often enough you can say with huge certainty they are owned by same individual.
Basically any piece of information that can be correlated is enough once you have enough data points. Hell, you could probably figure out a way to correlate it by temperature sensor readings
Having two phones is more common than you think, and has a very plausible explanation even if it's not true for the particular individual: One is my work phone, issued by my company, other one is mine
I feel like BYOD was when the disease accelerated. It was the coup excuse for everybody and their mother to own a piece of your personal phone. Bank apps not working with rooted phones is pretty much BYOD 2.0.
Follow the usernames in the response chain. I have two phones for the exact same reason as well: work issued & personal. It would hold up just because it’s actually true. There’s no need to arrange anything beyond how they are naturally arranged.
By rights the simple comeback is they can lie to you so F'em.
The real answer is you don't offer any explaination because it's not something you need to explain or get anyone's permission for.
Feel free to wonder. Give me a hard time and I'll just do my best to give you a hard time back. After you confiscate my stuff and detain me and I turn out not to have broken any laws, I'll do everything I can think of to extract an apology and compensation and penalty. Afro Man is my hero. You will become my new career.
That's my little fantasy anyway but I do see it as a duty to at least resist a little. In reality I'll fold pretty easy but I will be as much sand in the gears as I can.
In Uganda carrying two phones is completely normal. Many people have one for work and one for personal use, or simply because they can afford a second phone. Police wouldn't think twice about it.
> It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.
I had a Gmail account before they required phone numbers. One day, Google stopped allowing me to log in, demanding my phone number if I wanted to continue. Nothing was wrong with my credentials, or behavior patterns, or IP address, or anything at all. My already-registered recovery email address didn't help. There was no way to appeal.
I'm not willing to have my phone number extorted from me, so I sighed and accepted that I'll never again have use of that account. It remains a constant source of irritation, because it still forwards incoming messages to my home email address, and Google doesn't do a very good job of filtering out all the spam before they forward it my way.
Adding insult to injury, Google still (years later) hasn't made good on their announcement that idle accounts would be deleted. I wish they would. I'm done with Google.
> I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.
Every scammer, fraudster, scammer-in-training, fraudster-in-training, uses a Google account.
The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google because that's the start of their lead into their investigation. Google needs to provide answers, sometimes by regulation in countries.
> It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.
A process I've gone through a few times (though I didn't actually want a Google Account):
1) Get a new (second-hand sometimes) ChromeOS or Android device.
2) (if necessary) do a power-wash or factory-reset.
3) Do the "set up a new device" process.
4) When it asks you for a Google account, click on the "I don't have one. create a new account" button.
In all these cases, the device didn't (or couldn't, in the case of the Chromebook) have a SIMcard in it, so it couldn't link it to a phone number.
One smartphone that I bought for $20, and never (IIRC) had a SIMCard in, I think the only identity-oriented app I have on it is Netflix. I've wondered if Google links the smartphone's google account to the Netflix account (which is actually not me, but a cousin's), and whether Netflix is complicit in this linking.
I imagine that Google is keeping a log of the ip addresses that phone reports when it's connected to wifi. I There's probably some overlay between you and your known associates / locations.
> No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.
meta comes to mind? you can't even interact with their services unless you have an account, and they ban you if you don't reveal yourself transparently. then they ask you for a state-issued ID to appeal bans. seems like some great lengths to me.
> they ask you for a state-issued ID to appeal bans
Requires ID for "age verification" to ensure pedos aren't talking to children
"Move fast and break things" mentality, so IDs leak
Pedos use your leaked ID. You land on a list. Meta/Google/Discord/Persona/whoever pays you $20 and gets a slap on the wrist
IDs become useless, so Altman promotes WorldCoin and we all get our eyeballs scanned
Rinse, lather, repeat. Surveillance state grows. Terrorists continue to do terrorist stuff. Pedos continue to do pedo stuff. Normal people get random visits from gestapo because they are 110% sure you were involved in a crime despite proof that you were in a different state at the time.
I agree. Meta is as bad as if not worse than Google.
It is however much easier to navigate life without Meta than without Google. Even if you use different email, etc, if you collaborate with someone on a doc or whatever they are likely to send you a google link.
Recently its taken over and I can't switch back to Assistant on Android. Now I have timers that run for a bit and then disappear, and whenever I'm driving and use voice to call it brings up the phone number and requires me to press again to dial.
Absolutely frustrating and I don't understand how this can be pushed as the default.
I can only assume its another scenario where they disable all the features because I'm not in the US, but then never tested it.
Google discontinued Assistant in the first week of September, 2026; it was ostensibly 'replaced' by Gemini then. They should have allowed both until the kinks were worked out of Gemini.
They also attached to a VERY HIGH NUMBER of ip addresses when you launch Chrome. Run an application level firewall and look at Chrome's behavior on startup. So many that I think they are geolocating users, even across VPNs
Age verification is pretty aggressive... recently tried creating a youtube account (google) and they require gov't id/facecheck/creditcard? once you hit age restricted content.
Maybe, but I am not aware of anybody being forced to make a Facebook account.
Even in Europe, many banks are now blackmailing their clients into making Google accounts, as a condition for continuing to have access to online banking (and even if you had not wanted online banking, that would have been a difficult choice, as many brick-and-mortar bank agencies have been closed).
The banks have deactivated the hardware devices that provided one-time access tokens and they now require for login an app installed on your smartphone, and they refuse to give you the app from any other source except the Google store (or Apple store). You cannot download any app from the Google store without a Google account.
It would be enough for the banks to provide the apk file for downloading on their Web site, to be able to avoid having a Google account.
Have you noticed the front page article sharing front page real estate with this one about Big Tech getting in trouble for not doing more to stop scamming and fraudsters?
Regulators want Big Tech to stop children from doing various things (such as access certain platforms or content), to stop fraudsters and scammers, to stop foreign intelligence operations or bots from astroturfing social media/manipulating social discourse, and so on.
Failing to so leads to inquiries, new laws or regulations, fines, and so on.
The technical solutions to combat these problems are the exact solutions that also ruin privacy for users, create friction at account creation time, require ever more draconian identity verification methods and so on. It's 1:1.
"I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities."
It's really not any more complicated than that Governments have told them its time to start violating users privacy in order to combat these other problems.
It really bothers me that every dick and jane website has normalized asking for your personal phone number. It's the first thing they ask when you sign up. At this point your phone number has become your social security number of the internet.
I don't care if fighting fraud is hard for you. Figure it out without stripping away my privacy.
It can still be worse. Imagine this: you create an account. You can use the service's free tier. You decide to pay, so you enter your name, address, and credit card number. You get charged. Then you download their app to use the service, you trigger their OAuth flow and... it requires you to enter a phone number, not letting you use your subscription for which you already paid for without a phone number. Oh and, bonus points: you can't delete your credit card information from their system. There's no reachable human customer support, and the only way to delete your CC information from their system is to delete your whole account.
Now, which service I'm talking about? OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro, or more specifically, their Codex subscription. You can subscribe to their ChatGPT Pro for $200 no problem, no phone number is necessary, but you can't actually use it in Codex without a phone number as the OAuth flow requires you to enter one. And how do I know this? Well, I'm sure you can guess... :P
Claude tried demanding a photo ID from me when I tried to pay for services. I've never had that happen before. It was an _even worse_ feeling than having to give out a phone number: I can just rotate my phone number from my carrier.
and then they lock it in harder by using it for 2-or-more-factor authentication
apple has dark patterns for this, trying to get your phone number into their system. You have to do something like "other options" then "don't upgrade security" or something.
> It really bothers me that every dick and jane website has normalized asking for your personal phone number.
The most a website will get from me is a unique email address and a bogus phone number. If it insists on verifying that phone number, it loses my business.
Yeah, phone numbers are essentially KYC. I use a phone number verification site, but I can't recommend them because they stopped accepting Monero recently.
Google knows all about virtual phone numbers and won't accept them. If you don't have a number issued by a large telco, forget about creating a Google account.
It's super annoying, because it's normally also a path for account recovery. So if you need to change your number, good luck remembering where you have signed up with it.
That's why I stay away from trying Gemini or doing anything much with Google until I still host my main gmail account there. One misstep and I'll find myself locked out. Because it's Google's job to spy on everyone, if I have other accounts there, those will also locked out too ("oh! you're trying to circumvent our ban? we noticed!" kind of a thing). Then the only recourse from what I understand is to make an HN post and hope it makes it to the front page and someone from Google who knows someone else at Google will help you.
The biggest player in ad tech also being the biggest provider of mobile phone operating systems and web browser and web search and email services was only ever going to end up this way. I'm not a big fan of regulation but at some point a single corporate entity should not be allowed to control all of the things.
I wish organisations would respect the fact that I want to have different accounts for different purposes. This is often a security precaution to make sure that personal matters don't interfere with anything I'm doing for work or vice versa - or that work on one project for one customer and work on another project for another customer are completely independent and anything that compromises one in a security incident can't affect the other.
The modern trend of trying to tie everything you ever do to a specific phone number and in some cases not even allowing multiple accounts to be created using the same phone number undermines that compartmentalisation.
My own creepy Google story was about their relatively recent Google TV Streamer products that have basically replaced the old simple-but-effective Chromecast sticks. As soon as we started to set one up it wanted us to have a Google account (entirely unnecessary of course because we had accounts on each relevant streaming service already) and that in turn wanted all kinds of data about where our home was and so on. Obviously the device has wireless connectivity so I'm suspicious that it's also scanning for other network and location data and phoning home with that as well to associate with the physical address it already asked for.
It turned out that when we eventually reset it and used the remote (slow and painful as that is) to type in our credentials for the streaming services we wanted to use then we didn't need the Google account after all. But of course they've already got that account now and no doubt associated lots of quite detailed geographic and network information using just that five minute data grab. This kind of thing really should be just plain illegal. It's deceptive, intrusive, and malicious.
As a GrapheneOS enjoyer I was just hit by my financial institution with a requirement for age attestation/verification to use the app, due to state law.
I'm not installing Google Play, so there goes that!
I always assumed that if I add other Google accounts to my Android phone then they'd be linked together, so I avoided doing it. It's a pain because Google apps require it. For example I can't join a Google Meet from my phone for this reason because I've always kept the Google account I use for email separate from the Google account I use for Android (and then K-9 Mail via IMAP to access it to avoid connecting them there).
Ironically this means that my experience with Google apps on my Android phone has always been poor but other vendors' stuff work fine. For example I use Fastmail for some key email addresses and this works well for me whereas I cannot use the Gmail app.
Our corporate policy doesn't allow personal phones to be linked to corp accounts, for obvious reasons. We have no idea what kind of security your personal phone number has setup, nor do we compensate employees for their personal phones, nor do we want corporate communications happening on your personal device (work/life separation).
If the vendor is unable to comply, all we're using them for is email. Time to look elsewhere.
Is it silent, though? I got notifactions about it on my devices, then emails on each account. Then I went straight to delete the added numbers and disabled this "feature". It did not leave a good taste that I had to do this after the fact, I would have appreciated a notice with a chance to opt out first, because they may have already permanently stored those numbers in some internal history (I just asked Dropbox for my data and they listed every single email I've ever used on that account too). But, to be honest, I am not surprised, and I already consider all devices and numbers that ever come into contact with a Google account being permanently on record on some Google server.
Well, they might use zero Google accounts. There is no real difference between one or multiple accounts, security-wise, unless you are very diligent about using different VPNs and such.
Report to your state's privacy department (if applicable) and your Attorney General. No guarantees, but once it's in regulator hands, you can let them run with it.
The problem this can cause is that it could become the root identity for the effective social credit system. For example, if Uber bans you (it happens..), you might need a new phone number and email to get around it. At least you can get around it for now.
In fact yes, my email did contain clear instructions:
"You can manage this setting anytime on your $Phone_Model by going to Settings > Google services > All services > Phone number verification."
Sure, it's bad Google is anti-privacy and they're trying to stop you making an anonymous account, but that is their business model.
You're much better off using and supporting privacy focused services [1] instead of trying to make Google private. I do not have any Google accounts I depend on–I deleted all of them that I'd used personally, and now I only have attempts at anonymous accounts.
I wouldn't rely on them even if I wasn't constantly getting banned because they have no customer support, no E2EE, they scan your photos, it's insanity.
Its taking me awhile (about a month so far) but Im migrating my Google Pixel 5A to Google Pixel 10 Pro and GraphenOS. Its a step but seriously worth it to avoid the Google stink. RFC messaging is the only real breakage Ive seen so far in that folks that have me in a group msg dont work any more (actually that COULD work as a feature and so far everyone Ive talked to that swear they sent a msg are iPhone users so it could be another Google-Apple pissing contest underway.
Just the other day I tried to log into the Google account I have connected only to this HN account, and Google asked me to use the account linked to the backup email address on that account to verify my login, then logged me into that account on my phone when I used it to verify my login. After that point I saw my phone number attached to the HN-specific Gmail account, though it may have been attached before.
All my SIMs I've used in my phone seem to have been added as verified phone numbers to my primary account, but my secondary accounts don't have any phone numbers still.
It's still somewhat obnoxious since it means random travel sims that could get reused after they expire are "verified" for my account.
I don't think this is new. If you have ever gotten a "fuck off and die" letter from AdSense after like 2010 or so, then you know they will correlate your identity and ban your other accounts too. They don't ban accounts, they ban people.
I've also heard of people getting oopsied trying to farm the GCP demo credits and someone on HN once claimed that a company's gsuite tenant was actioned when they hired somebody on google's naughty list.
Of course they are. What else are those highly paid developers going to do with their time? Utilize their resources to help humanity or more invasion of privacy?
Google is not so silently deleting the accounts (gmail, etc) of anyone that has not given them a phone number to link and generate information sales profit from. It happened to my gmail account and there was nothing I could do, short of supplying a phone number, to stop it. They lock you out of your account saying you must add a phone number to log in, even if you put in your user and pass and even alternate secondary auth mechanisms are completed successfully, they say you still haven't logged in. And because you haven't "logged in", they say the account has become inactive for $x months and delete it.
Stop using google services for your personal stuff. I know many can't avoid it at work, but personally, we all can.
Anyone still having doubts about this company? To be fair: the US corporations all do that. I remember how Facebook linked off-connection data together. They are all operating in the same manner here, sustaining US spy interests.
I felt a bit betrayed when I discovered that Facebook has a list of the people I have communicated with on Whatsapp, and was sharing this list with their advertisers. Not just the phone numbers, but the Facebook accounts. My Whatsapp is not associated with Facebook in any way except that they have the same phone number, and I do not have Facebook on my phone.
fuck. keeping your phone number off accounts is an important security step as many attacks require that you have a phone number connected.
If it's ever been on there you cant trust that some long forgotten recovery pathway can't be convinced to use it to authenticate access to your account.
Bonus-rage if the exploitable "recovery" path relies on "Security Questions" you cannot change which are not-really-very-secret and which overlap with the same questions recorded (and leaked) by other companies.
Probably only 0.0001% of people care about this. It makes sense that the more convenient option is default. There's an option to turn it off if you want.
Google is probably the most aggressive anti-privacy big tech company currently operating.
No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.
The requirement to have a mobile device to scan a QR code to verify that you're human. Reverse SMS verification, where you have to send an SMS rather than receive a verification code. You think of signing up using a VPN server in another country? The phone number you use to send the SMS from must also be from that country.
Not being able to watch YouTube videos when using VPN - without signing in to a Google account, all under the guise of "bot protection."
Gemini not working in 3/4 of cases when using VPN.
It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.
I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.
PS. The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google
Trying to fight it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. I carry two phones now - since I have my "privacy" enabled phone that basically has nothing on it. Email, messages, weather app and a few privacy enabled browsers. My other phone has all my "faux" google stuff on it. Maps, gmail, banking apps, my authenticator apps, music apps, etc.
Even then, these can all be tied together fairly easy, but just trying to make it harder to keep my data private is such a battle; and friends always ask me why I spend so much time trying to keep myself anonymous when in 2026 its virtually impossible to do so.
I always tell them: “Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” (To live well is to live concealed.)
If two phones both carry enabled GPS and/or have NFC or bluetooth switched on then it is very easy to match them.
Nothing like that is required, if you see them on same mobile tower or wifi networks often enough you can say with huge certainty they are owned by same individual.
Basically any piece of information that can be correlated is enough once you have enough data points. Hell, you could probably figure out a way to correlate it by temperature sensor readings
This all sounds completely sensible. And yet, being caught by the police with two phones would probably be a big stupid red flag for them.
Having two phones is more common than you think, and has a very plausible explanation even if it's not true for the particular individual: One is my work phone, issued by my company, other one is mine
That happens all the time
Separation of church and state goes way back, maybe before the iphone.
I feel like BYOD was when the disease accelerated. It was the coup excuse for everybody and their mother to own a piece of your personal phone. Bank apps not working with rooted phones is pretty much BYOD 2.0.
Unless you’re clever about setting up the phones to match your excuse, you are now lying to the police as well.
Follow the usernames in the response chain. I have two phones for the exact same reason as well: work issued & personal. It would hold up just because it’s actually true. There’s no need to arrange anything beyond how they are naturally arranged.
I think this is the time to share this classic PSA about why you should always exercise your right to silence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
depending on where you are it may be legal to lie to the police.
Incorporate and have the phone be owned by your corporation. You're a contractor who separates business from pleasure.
It's crazy that the police can lie to you.
By rights the simple comeback is they can lie to you so F'em.
The real answer is you don't offer any explaination because it's not something you need to explain or get anyone's permission for.
Feel free to wonder. Give me a hard time and I'll just do my best to give you a hard time back. After you confiscate my stuff and detain me and I turn out not to have broken any laws, I'll do everything I can think of to extract an apology and compensation and penalty. Afro Man is my hero. You will become my new career.
That's my little fantasy anyway but I do see it as a duty to at least resist a little. In reality I'll fold pretty easy but I will be as much sand in the gears as I can.
whatever compensation you're going to extract, if any, is almost certainly coming out of taxpayer pockets - the cop couldn't care less about it.
In Uganda carrying two phones is completely normal. Many people have one for work and one for personal use, or simply because they can afford a second phone. Police wouldn't think twice about it.
40 minutes, and not a single ‘I’m moving to Uganda’ message.
Why don't you go first?
> It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.
I had a Gmail account before they required phone numbers. One day, Google stopped allowing me to log in, demanding my phone number if I wanted to continue. Nothing was wrong with my credentials, or behavior patterns, or IP address, or anything at all. My already-registered recovery email address didn't help. There was no way to appeal.
I'm not willing to have my phone number extorted from me, so I sighed and accepted that I'll never again have use of that account. It remains a constant source of irritation, because it still forwards incoming messages to my home email address, and Google doesn't do a very good job of filtering out all the spam before they forward it my way.
Adding insult to injury, Google still (years later) hasn't made good on their announcement that idle accounts would be deleted. I wish they would. I'm done with Google.
> Google still (years later) hasn't made good on their announcement that idle accounts would be deleted.
They should be after 2 years, I occasionally get emails, linking: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290
> I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.
Every scammer, fraudster, scammer-in-training, fraudster-in-training, uses a Google account.
The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google because that's the start of their lead into their investigation. Google needs to provide answers, sometimes by regulation in countries.
> It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.
A process I've gone through a few times (though I didn't actually want a Google Account):
1) Get a new (second-hand sometimes) ChromeOS or Android device.
2) (if necessary) do a power-wash or factory-reset.
3) Do the "set up a new device" process.
4) When it asks you for a Google account, click on the "I don't have one. create a new account" button.
In all these cases, the device didn't (or couldn't, in the case of the Chromebook) have a SIMcard in it, so it couldn't link it to a phone number.
One smartphone that I bought for $20, and never (IIRC) had a SIMCard in, I think the only identity-oriented app I have on it is Netflix. I've wondered if Google links the smartphone's google account to the Netflix account (which is actually not me, but a cousin's), and whether Netflix is complicit in this linking.
I imagine that Google is keeping a log of the ip addresses that phone reports when it's connected to wifi. I There's probably some overlay between you and your known associates / locations.
They also log all the locations where anybody's phone encountered an SSID.
It's unclear whether an SSID suffixed with _nomap truly opts out of the collection, or whether it simply opts out of later sharing.
Even if they don't, the law enforcement definitely does (or rather requires your ISP to).
So depending on who you are trying to protect against you are in for varying amounts of fun.
> No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.
meta comes to mind? you can't even interact with their services unless you have an account, and they ban you if you don't reveal yourself transparently. then they ask you for a state-issued ID to appeal bans. seems like some great lengths to me.
"Move fast and break things" mentality, so IDs leak
Pedos use your leaked ID. You land on a list. Meta/Google/Discord/Persona/whoever pays you $20 and gets a slap on the wrist
IDs become useless, so Altman promotes WorldCoin and we all get our eyeballs scanned
Rinse, lather, repeat. Surveillance state grows. Terrorists continue to do terrorist stuff. Pedos continue to do pedo stuff. Normal people get random visits from gestapo because they are 110% sure you were involved in a crime despite proof that you were in a different state at the time.
We're really creating a great world...
I agree. Meta is as bad as if not worse than Google.
It is however much easier to navigate life without Meta than without Google. Even if you use different email, etc, if you collaborate with someone on a doc or whatever they are likely to send you a google link.
google is everywhere. Most websites have one or more of google fonts, google apis, googletagmanager/doubleclick, captcha or more.
One up-and-coming entrant is cloudflare, which prevents you from accessing websites unless you have javascript and cookies enabled.
all the other cdn providers do this too, like akamai, fastly, cloudflare, etc.
Gemini doesn't work 10/10 times for me.
Recently its taken over and I can't switch back to Assistant on Android. Now I have timers that run for a bit and then disappear, and whenever I'm driving and use voice to call it brings up the phone number and requires me to press again to dial.
Absolutely frustrating and I don't understand how this can be pushed as the default.
I can only assume its another scenario where they disable all the features because I'm not in the US, but then never tested it.
Google discontinued Assistant in the first week of September, 2026; it was ostensibly 'replaced' by Gemini then. They should have allowed both until the kinks were worked out of Gemini.
Unfortunately voice control of my phone died on that date too.
Thanks Google.
They also attached to a VERY HIGH NUMBER of ip addresses when you launch Chrome. Run an application level firewall and look at Chrome's behavior on startup. So many that I think they are geolocating users, even across VPNs
Age verification is pretty aggressive... recently tried creating a youtube account (google) and they require gov't id/facecheck/creditcard? once you hit age restricted content.
Do you say google over meta because meta has a smaller footprint?
also: you can subscribe to duckduckgo ($99 or $199/year) and that gives you not only VPN access, but DDaaS - Data Deletion as a Service.
:)
(don't know how data deletion works outside of california, but I think california allows you to say "all brokers delete my data")
Meta is worse, but easier to ignore.
> The requirement to have a mobile device to scan a QR code to verify that you're human.
FWIW I've never seen this.
It's required for setting up a new Youtube account now.
> Google is probably the most aggressive anti-privacy big tech company currently operating
isnt that their only business model almost from day 1? Everyone shitting on Meta because of privacy but Google's the worst.
the original business model was, if I'm not mistaken, licensing the search technology.
Then they found that showing ads with the search results made them a lot more money.
They started optimizing for money made from ads, which depends on user data - letting advertisers show ads to targeted customers.
> No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation
Dunno. Facebook is pretty ruthless and evil here as well.
Maybe, but I am not aware of anybody being forced to make a Facebook account.
Even in Europe, many banks are now blackmailing their clients into making Google accounts, as a condition for continuing to have access to online banking (and even if you had not wanted online banking, that would have been a difficult choice, as many brick-and-mortar bank agencies have been closed).
Why isn't there a European alternative to Gmail? One that is focused on Euro laws like GDPR ?
The Google accounts are not required for e-mail.
The banks have deactivated the hardware devices that provided one-time access tokens and they now require for login an app installed on your smartphone, and they refuse to give you the app from any other source except the Google store (or Apple store). You cannot download any app from the Google store without a Google account.
It would be enough for the banks to provide the apk file for downloading on their Web site, to be able to avoid having a Google account.
Google is better at it, they goon from the closest while Meta just pulls up a seat.
Have you noticed the front page article sharing front page real estate with this one about Big Tech getting in trouble for not doing more to stop scamming and fraudsters?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/14/dating-app-s...
Regulators want Big Tech to stop children from doing various things (such as access certain platforms or content), to stop fraudsters and scammers, to stop foreign intelligence operations or bots from astroturfing social media/manipulating social discourse, and so on.
Failing to so leads to inquiries, new laws or regulations, fines, and so on.
The technical solutions to combat these problems are the exact solutions that also ruin privacy for users, create friction at account creation time, require ever more draconian identity verification methods and so on. It's 1:1.
"I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities."
It's really not any more complicated than that Governments have told them its time to start violating users privacy in order to combat these other problems.
More data = better ad sales.
line go up
It really bothers me that every dick and jane website has normalized asking for your personal phone number. It's the first thing they ask when you sign up. At this point your phone number has become your social security number of the internet.
I don't care if fighting fraud is hard for you. Figure it out without stripping away my privacy.
> It's the first thing they ask when you sign up.
It can still be worse. Imagine this: you create an account. You can use the service's free tier. You decide to pay, so you enter your name, address, and credit card number. You get charged. Then you download their app to use the service, you trigger their OAuth flow and... it requires you to enter a phone number, not letting you use your subscription for which you already paid for without a phone number. Oh and, bonus points: you can't delete your credit card information from their system. There's no reachable human customer support, and the only way to delete your CC information from their system is to delete your whole account.
Now, which service I'm talking about? OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro, or more specifically, their Codex subscription. You can subscribe to their ChatGPT Pro for $200 no problem, no phone number is necessary, but you can't actually use it in Codex without a phone number as the OAuth flow requires you to enter one. And how do I know this? Well, I'm sure you can guess... :P
File a chargeback.
Claude tried demanding a photo ID from me when I tried to pay for services. I've never had that happen before. It was an _even worse_ feeling than having to give out a phone number: I can just rotate my phone number from my carrier.
and then they lock it in harder by using it for 2-or-more-factor authentication
apple has dark patterns for this, trying to get your phone number into their system. You have to do something like "other options" then "don't upgrade security" or something.
> It really bothers me that every dick and jane website has normalized asking for your personal phone number.
The most a website will get from me is a unique email address and a bogus phone number. If it insists on verifying that phone number, it loses my business.
Yeah, phone numbers are essentially KYC. I use a phone number verification site, but I can't recommend them because they stopped accepting Monero recently.
For long term numbers I would use jmp.chat.
Google knows all about virtual phone numbers and won't accept them. If you don't have a number issued by a large telco, forget about creating a Google account.
JMP is a real carrier number so it should work better for 2fa than VoIP numbers.
I haven't used it yet, but I'm switching to it once my current plan runs out. There's plenty of options for data.
A lot of them also block voip numbers. This is obviously just a way to collect cell numbers that are easy to send spam SMS messages to.
I agree with this. They should have to keep some insane bond for every phone number they keep to pay out when there is a data leak.
It's super annoying, because it's normally also a path for account recovery. So if you need to change your number, good luck remembering where you have signed up with it.
That's why I stay away from trying Gemini or doing anything much with Google until I still host my main gmail account there. One misstep and I'll find myself locked out. Because it's Google's job to spy on everyone, if I have other accounts there, those will also locked out too ("oh! you're trying to circumvent our ban? we noticed!" kind of a thing). Then the only recourse from what I understand is to make an HN post and hope it makes it to the front page and someone from Google who knows someone else at Google will help you.
The biggest player in ad tech also being the biggest provider of mobile phone operating systems and web browser and web search and email services was only ever going to end up this way. I'm not a big fan of regulation but at some point a single corporate entity should not be allowed to control all of the things.
I wish organisations would respect the fact that I want to have different accounts for different purposes. This is often a security precaution to make sure that personal matters don't interfere with anything I'm doing for work or vice versa - or that work on one project for one customer and work on another project for another customer are completely independent and anything that compromises one in a security incident can't affect the other.
The modern trend of trying to tie everything you ever do to a specific phone number and in some cases not even allowing multiple accounts to be created using the same phone number undermines that compartmentalisation.
My own creepy Google story was about their relatively recent Google TV Streamer products that have basically replaced the old simple-but-effective Chromecast sticks. As soon as we started to set one up it wanted us to have a Google account (entirely unnecessary of course because we had accounts on each relevant streaming service already) and that in turn wanted all kinds of data about where our home was and so on. Obviously the device has wireless connectivity so I'm suspicious that it's also scanning for other network and location data and phoning home with that as well to associate with the physical address it already asked for.
It turned out that when we eventually reset it and used the remote (slow and painful as that is) to type in our credentials for the streaming services we wanted to use then we didn't need the Google account after all. But of course they've already got that account now and no doubt associated lots of quite detailed geographic and network information using just that five minute data grab. This kind of thing really should be just plain illegal. It's deceptive, intrusive, and malicious.
As a GrapheneOS enjoyer I was just hit by my financial institution with a requirement for age attestation/verification to use the app, due to state law.
I'm not installing Google Play, so there goes that!
I always assumed that if I add other Google accounts to my Android phone then they'd be linked together, so I avoided doing it. It's a pain because Google apps require it. For example I can't join a Google Meet from my phone for this reason because I've always kept the Google account I use for email separate from the Google account I use for Android (and then K-9 Mail via IMAP to access it to avoid connecting them there).
Ironically this means that my experience with Google apps on my Android phone has always been poor but other vendors' stuff work fine. For example I use Fastmail for some key email addresses and this works well for me whereas I cannot use the Gmail app.
I guess I made the right choice.
Our corporate policy doesn't allow personal phones to be linked to corp accounts, for obvious reasons. We have no idea what kind of security your personal phone number has setup, nor do we compensate employees for their personal phones, nor do we want corporate communications happening on your personal device (work/life separation).
If the vendor is unable to comply, all we're using them for is email. Time to look elsewhere.
Is it silent, though? I got notifactions about it on my devices, then emails on each account. Then I went straight to delete the added numbers and disabled this "feature". It did not leave a good taste that I had to do this after the fact, I would have appreciated a notice with a chance to opt out first, because they may have already permanently stored those numbers in some internal history (I just asked Dropbox for my data and they listed every single email I've ever used on that account too). But, to be honest, I am not surprised, and I already consider all devices and numbers that ever come into contact with a Google account being permanently on record on some Google server.
Very unexpected behavior, esp for those with several accounts and phone numbers, intending to keep them separate for security or other reasons.
People who want security don't use multiple google accounts tho.
Well, they might use zero Google accounts. There is no real difference between one or multiple accounts, security-wise, unless you are very diligent about using different VPNs and such.
This is an outrageous privacy invasion and if it's not illegal already, it should be.
Report to your state's privacy department (if applicable) and your Attorney General. No guarantees, but once it's in regulator hands, you can let them run with it.
https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/
Yay surveillance state pushed by ad tech!
Um, I think you mean convenience at the cost of privacy, which most people have no problem with, unfortunately.
Think of how nice this will be for all the people who don't care and have given up! So convenient.
The problem this can cause is that it could become the root identity for the effective social credit system. For example, if Uber bans you (it happens..), you might need a new phone number and email to get around it. At least you can get around it for now.
I think it's creepy and bad, but "silently" is not accurate, at least in my case: Google sent each of my accounts an email telling me about it.
That's mighty generous of them. Does the mail contain an opt-out link?
In fact yes, my email did contain clear instructions: "You can manage this setting anytime on your $Phone_Model by going to Settings > Google services > All services > Phone number verification."
Sure, it's bad Google is anti-privacy and they're trying to stop you making an anonymous account, but that is their business model.
You're much better off using and supporting privacy focused services [1] instead of trying to make Google private. I do not have any Google accounts I depend on–I deleted all of them that I'd used personally, and now I only have attempts at anonymous accounts.
I wouldn't rely on them even if I wasn't constantly getting banned because they have no customer support, no E2EE, they scan your photos, it's insanity.
[1] https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/
Its taking me awhile (about a month so far) but Im migrating my Google Pixel 5A to Google Pixel 10 Pro and GraphenOS. Its a step but seriously worth it to avoid the Google stink. RFC messaging is the only real breakage Ive seen so far in that folks that have me in a group msg dont work any more (actually that COULD work as a feature and so far everyone Ive talked to that swear they sent a msg are iPhone users so it could be another Google-Apple pissing contest underway.
Just the other day I tried to log into the Google account I have connected only to this HN account, and Google asked me to use the account linked to the backup email address on that account to verify my login, then logged me into that account on my phone when I used it to verify my login. After that point I saw my phone number attached to the HN-specific Gmail account, though it may have been attached before.
When Google did a backroom deal with Dun & Bradstreet for business verification, it was the nail in the coffin for this overly bureaucratic turd.
Can't wait for the open-source release of Google on GitHub.
This isn't the behavior I observe on my phone.
All my SIMs I've used in my phone seem to have been added as verified phone numbers to my primary account, but my secondary accounts don't have any phone numbers still.
It's still somewhat obnoxious since it means random travel sims that could get reused after they expire are "verified" for my account.
Of course they do, I never expected anything else. That's why I never gave it to them for any of my accounts with them (that I barely use anyway).
I don't think this is new. If you have ever gotten a "fuck off and die" letter from AdSense after like 2010 or so, then you know they will correlate your identity and ban your other accounts too. They don't ban accounts, they ban people.
I've also heard of people getting oopsied trying to farm the GCP demo credits and someone on HN once claimed that a company's gsuite tenant was actioned when they hired somebody on google's naughty list.
That's why I'm bombarded all the time to give my phone number...
I'm sorry, did anyone assume this wasn't the case?
"Now" ? I assumed they always did that. And I'd also assume the documentation change is CYA in case someone tried to sue them over it
Of course they are. What else are those highly paid developers going to do with their time? Utilize their resources to help humanity or more invasion of privacy?
Google is not so silently deleting the accounts (gmail, etc) of anyone that has not given them a phone number to link and generate information sales profit from. It happened to my gmail account and there was nothing I could do, short of supplying a phone number, to stop it. They lock you out of your account saying you must add a phone number to log in, even if you put in your user and pass and even alternate secondary auth mechanisms are completed successfully, they say you still haven't logged in. And because you haven't "logged in", they say the account has become inactive for $x months and delete it.
Stop using google services for your personal stuff. I know many can't avoid it at work, but personally, we all can.
Daily Evil by Google.
Anyone still having doubts about this company? To be fair: the US corporations all do that. I remember how Facebook linked off-connection data together. They are all operating in the same manner here, sustaining US spy interests.
I felt a bit betrayed when I discovered that Facebook has a list of the people I have communicated with on Whatsapp, and was sharing this list with their advertisers. Not just the phone numbers, but the Facebook accounts. My Whatsapp is not associated with Facebook in any way except that they have the same phone number, and I do not have Facebook on my phone.
fuck. keeping your phone number off accounts is an important security step as many attacks require that you have a phone number connected.
If it's ever been on there you cant trust that some long forgotten recovery pathway can't be convinced to use it to authenticate access to your account.
Bonus-rage if the exploitable "recovery" path relies on "Security Questions" you cannot change which are not-really-very-secret and which overlap with the same questions recorded (and leaked) by other companies.
"Silently" has been redefined to mean "we know this because of the emails it sends".
No shit
What a fucking horrible company.
More companies have my phone number than not..
Probably only 0.0001% of people care about this. It makes sense that the more convenient option is default. There's an option to turn it off if you want.
> There's an option to turn it off if you want.
In practice, there isn't really an option to turn it off.