And what gets me is that it's not just 'you need a phone', it's 'you need a Google or Apple account'.
not your linux phone with waydroid or fairphone with lineageos
The account would be easy enough with fake data and a 10€ prepaid one-time-use phone number. Finding an exploit in Android such that you can turn off Google's tracking but not trigger their "you modified your device" scans (that are to be tied to your government identity verification continuing to work) is a game I'm not looking forward to playing.