zlacker

>>wut42+(OP)
> The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos..

Hopefully that clarifies for some folks why these big tech/social media companies insist on having your phone number as a “2FA for security” despite all the sim-swap attacks.. simply for this moment, because you might be using a VPN, and address/name aren’t in your google account, but definitely your phone number is there, it’s even worse if you’re using an android too, as they probably will pull out all your app/browsing history..

>>tamimi+ya
"Guys, we know our users' names, addresses, all of their emails, browsing history, location history and contacts... but we're missing the critical information! Their phone numbers! Can anyone come up with a security justification for asking for it?"

-Nobody ever.

Come on, use your brain. Even if you are talking about smaller entities who might otherwise only have names and emails, why would they want phone numbers? They don't care about identifying you. And even if they did they already have your email and name.

Step away from the tin foil...

>>IshKeb+821
> why would they want phone numbers

Because it is trivial to make a burner/secondary email address, but much less trivial to do the same with a phone number. Furthermore, everyone adds phone numbers to their contacts but very few add emails, so phone numbers are much more valuable from the perspective of inferring social graphs.

Both of these are extremely valuable for adtech and generic "growth & engagement" scum, thus why all companies matching this criteria started effectively requiring phone numbers. The 2FA/security angle is just an excuse for the true reason behind it.