alt Hacker NewsGoogle is silently linking your phone number across all signed-in accounts
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It really bothers me that every dick and jane website has normalized asking for your personal phone number. It's the first thing they ask when you sign up. At this point your phone number has become your social security number of the internet.
I don't care if fighting fraud is hard for you. Figure it out without stripping away my privacy.
That's why I stay away from trying Gemini or doing anything much with Google until I still host my main gmail account there. One misstep and I'll find myself locked out. Because it's Google's job to spy on everyone, if I have other accounts there, those will also locked out too ("oh! you're trying to circumvent our ban? we noticed!" kind of a thing). Then the only recourse from what I understand is to make an HN post and hope it makes it to the front page and someone from Google who knows someone else at Google will help you.
The biggest player in ad tech also being the biggest provider of mobile phone operating systems and web browser and web search and email services was only ever going to end up this way. I'm not a big fan of regulation but at some point a single corporate entity should not be allowed to control all of the things.
I always assumed that if I add other Google accounts to my Android phone then they'd be linked together, so I avoided doing it. It's a pain because Google apps require it. For example I can't join a Google Meet from my phone for this reason because I've always kept the Google account I use for email separate from the Google account I use for Android (and then K-9 Mail via IMAP to access it to avoid connecting them there).
Ironically this means that my experience with Google apps on my Android phone has always been poor but other vendors' stuff work fine. For example I use Fastmail for some key email addresses and this works well for me whereas I cannot use the Gmail app.
I guess I made the right choice.
When Google did a backroom deal with Dun & Bradstreet for business verification, it was the nail in the coffin for this overly bureaucratic turd.
Can't wait for the open-source release of Google on GitHub.
The problem this can cause is that it could become the root identity for the effective social credit system. For example, if Uber bans you (it happens..), you might need a new phone number and email to get around it. At least you can get around it for now.
Our corporate policy doesn't allow personal phones to be linked to corp accounts, for obvious reasons. We have no idea what kind of security your personal phone number has setup, nor do we compensate employees for their personal phones, nor do we want corporate communications happening on your personal device (work/life separation).
If the vendor is unable to comply, all we're using them for is email. Time to look elsewhere.
Of course they are. What else are those highly paid developers going to do with their time? Utilize their resources to help humanity or more invasion of privacy?
Sure, it's bad Google is anti-privacy and they're trying to stop you making an anonymous account, but that is their business model.
You're much better off using and supporting privacy focused services [1] instead of trying to make Google private. I do not have any Google accounts I depend on–I deleted all of them that I'd used personally, and now I only have attempts at anonymous accounts.
I wouldn't rely on them even if I wasn't constantly getting banned because they have no customer support, no E2EE, they scan your photos, it's insanity.
Very unexpected behavior, esp for those with several accounts and phone numbers, intending to keep them separate for security or other reasons.
This is an outrageous privacy invasion and if it's not illegal already, it should be.
I think it's creepy and bad, but "silently" is not accurate, at least in my case: Google sent each of my accounts an email telling me about it.
Of course they do, I never expected anything else. That's why I never gave it to them for any of my accounts with them (that I barely use anyway).
Its taking me awhile (about a month so far) but Im migrating my Google Pixel 5A to Google Pixel 10 Pro and GraphenOS. Its a step but seriously worth it to avoid the Google stink. RFC messaging is the only real breakage Ive seen so far in that folks that have me in a group msg dont work any more (actually that COULD work as a feature and so far everyone Ive talked to that swear they sent a msg are iPhone users so it could be another Google-Apple pissing contest underway.
Is it silent, though? I got notifactions about it on my devices, then emails on each account. Then I went straight to delete the added numbers and disabled this "feature". It did not leave a good taste that I had to do this after the fact, I would have appreciated a notice with a chance to opt out first, because they may have already permanently stored those numbers in some internal history (I just asked Dropbox for my data and they listed every single email I've ever used on that account too). But, to be honest, I am not surprised, and I already consider all devices and numbers that ever come into contact with a Google account being permanently on record on some Google server.
I'm sorry, did anyone assume this wasn't the case?
Just the other day I tried to log into the Google account I have connected only to this HN account, and Google asked me to use the account linked to the backup email address on that account to verify my login, then logged me into that account on my phone when I used it to verify my login. After that point I saw my phone number attached to the HN-specific Gmail account, though it may have been attached before.
This isn't the behavior I observe on my phone.
All my SIMs I've used in my phone seem to have been added as verified phone numbers to my primary account, but my secondary accounts don't have any phone numbers still.
It's still somewhat obnoxious since it means random travel sims that could get reused after they expire are "verified" for my account.
Google is not so silently deleting the accounts (gmail, etc) of anyone that has not given them a phone number to link and generate information sales profit from. It happened to my gmail account and there was nothing I could do, short of supplying a phone number, to stop it.
Stop using google services for your personal stuff. I know many can't avoid it at work, but personally, we all can.
Daily Evil by Google.
Anyone still having doubts about this company? To be fair: the US corporations all do that. I remember how Facebook linked off-connection data together. They are all operating in the same manner here, sustaining US spy interests.
I don't think this is new. If you have ever gotten a "fuck off and die" letter from AdSense after like 2010 or so, then you know they will correlate your identity and ban your other accounts too. They don't ban accounts, they ban people.
I've also heard of people getting oopsied trying to farm the GCP demo credits and someone on HN once claimed that a company's gsuite tenant was actioned when they hired somebody on google's naughty list.
More companies have my phone number than not..
No shit
fuck. keeping your phone number off accounts is an important security step as many attacks require that you have a phone number connected.
If it's ever been on there you cant trust that some long forgotten recovery pathway can't be convinced to use it to authenticate access to your account.
"Silently" has been redefined to mean "we know this because of the emails it sends".
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What a fucking horrible company.
Probably only 0.0001% of people care about this. It makes sense that the more convenient option is default. There's an option to turn it off if you want.
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