Re: Google is silently linking your phone number across all signed-in accounts

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

maxo133, 6 hours ago