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..
-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...
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.
I'd buy the spam reduction angle - it's a bit easier to get an email address than a phone number. But I have never seen a service require 2FA (except things like NPM and PyPI; but that's clearly for security) so I don't think it's that either.
I think it's pretty clear that the reason really is security. There's no conspiracy.
Agreed. But I disagree that the true reason is security. The true reason is better stalking which is valuable to adtech scum which now happens to be the vast majority of consumer-grade tech.
> I have never seen a service require 2FA
Try register on Twitter. They'll let you register but then randomly suspend your account for alleged ToS violations (even if the account was outright inactive) but will give you the option of instantly unbanning yourself following phone number verification. Microsoft will randomly lock out MS accounts without a phone number attached and will require a phone number for "security" upon the next login (the security angle being very dubious considering they don't have a number on file to compare to, so even an attacker can pass this challenge just fine). Etc.
> There's no conspiracy.
It's true, there's no conspiracy, it's just business and can be explained by common sense and economics. Phone numbers help tracking people. Adtech makes more money the better it can target its ads. Most consumer tech nowadays is intertwined with adtech. Said consumer tech thus optimizes for higher profit by collecting more data to help adtech.
I have accounts with both of these orgs, not equipped with 2FA and none of what you describe has ever occurred.