Glad I don't have any Google accounts. Anyone who still has Google or Microsoft accounts needs to reevaluate their choices. Those companies (and most others) will throw you to the wolves the second it becomes convenient, if they haven't already brought them into the next room that displays a live video feed of you while the wolves have a bidding war over which cut they each get for dinner.
Once Google has your phone on one account it is on all of them, and that number is usually already tied to a real person, and Google is often the first place investigators go, and creating a new account without handing them one is now close to impossible. The two-phone workaround does not survive either -- same tower, same WiFi, or one contact who has both numbers is enough to join them. You do the only right thing: no Google account at all, and no number that is yours sitting on anything you care about.
Glad I don't have any Google accounts. Anyone who still has Google or Microsoft accounts needs to reevaluate their choices. Those companies (and most others) will throw you to the wolves the second it becomes convenient, if they haven't already brought them into the next room that displays a live video feed of you while the wolves have a bidding war over which cut they each get for dinner.
Once Google has your phone on one account it is on all of them, and that number is usually already tied to a real person, and Google is often the first place investigators go, and creating a new account without handing them one is now close to impossible. The two-phone workaround does not survive either -- same tower, same WiFi, or one contact who has both numbers is enough to join them. You do the only right thing: no Google account at all, and no number that is yours sitting on anything you care about.
I assumed this was already standard Google behavior, tbh I was surprised to see it framed as a fresh PSA/news :))
Haven't had a Google account since the beginning of 2023, and don't miss it.