this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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Have you people never heard of a phone book? Phone numbers aren't sensitive information. If they want to scrape your phone number they can legally and trivially do so through public data sources. Google does plenty of sketchy things around privacy, but this isn't one of them, it's just about security.
Is your mobile phone number in the phone book? Mine isn't. I guess you could use a landline number to prevent giving out information that isn't publicly available, but I'd wager most people using these sites these days use their mobile phones. Also even my landline isn't listed in the phone book.
I still have a landline which I use specifically for entering into websites.
At one point I thought it was a really clever thing to do, but now I'm not sure what I'm accomplishing with that, if anything.
I mostly agree, however setting your phone number includes the verification process. With that, Google knows for near certain that this is indeed your number.
Man I haven't even seen a phone book in at least 10 years. Do they actually still exist?