you can skip that part.

Your sim card is a chip, is it not? If they can link us all up with our chipped cards in our wallets, our sim cards, any other work related chips, and then our business online, they can really get a good idea of exactly every personality on the planet. Can they not? Pair that with the dna samples we've all had taken all our lives compliments of visits to the doctor, any vaccinations as children, etc., etc., etc....it starts to be a pretty big picture of our lives, cradle to grave. There's nothing about us that's secret in any way.

I'm thinking about getting rid of my mobile phone and I live in the land of Nokia. My cards are already gone. Only chip-free customer loyalty cards here, and few of those (not very loyal, me). No credit whatsoever. Few payments other than food and that's only in winter. I've had it with all those things.

Life will get simpler when you make it your task to do so. Start now.

I made another new account.

No phone number needed.

I think this one has been..

BUSTED

They just need your number so they can track you and spy on your searches. Scroogle.

Worst case scenario, buy a $20 pre-pay cell phone, which makes you basically anonymous as far as tracing the number back to you.

Sensationlist headline, my biggest ATS pet peeve...

Gmail offers an option to send a text to your phone, but you can decline the service. I have signed up for countless gmail acccts, and always decline the option.

Like a few have said here in this thread, they have created accts today, since the writing of this thread, without having to use their cell number.

Perhaps an edit of the title is in order.

This is another reason not to use Google. Data mining at it's finest

here something that you ppl might want to try, Fix a photoshop image of yourself and some wanted person, pref an international terrorists then upload it to picasweb and it will do its random face recognition thing, in the name of the wanted person put some obscure name, then watch it go crazy and watch how fast search engine crawlers come to visit you or your site. P.S., did that two nights ago and it actually works, looks like tags are so 2000, apart form phrase tags we know have visual tag for seo blacky tip top hats.

p.s. forgot to mention that for you to see the crawlers come road raging to your new uplaod image you will need to insert into some page, either e blogger or some other website. Its purely there for educational purposes nothing more nothing less.

My Google pushed me for months last year to submit a phone number, to "secure my account." The way around
having to do so was an unapparent tiny clickie...I would always have to manipulate my way to my mail.
But one day Gmail threw at me that my ACCOUNT HAD BEEN COMPROMISED, it even said my account had been accessed from...India?!
I was DENIED ACCESS to my own account, apparently on the grounds that I may not be, me. And to regain access, I would have to tell Google my cell phone number, and be texted a special code.
I was mad because, firstly, isn't the alleged security breach on Google's end anyway, really they could pull this one on anyone...secondly suspicious that Google was indeed pulling one, because they so obviously, sneakily, and unsuccessfully had been trying to obtain my number for months.
As would be the case with many people, I was amid correspondence in my Gmail, a NEEDED to access my account...
Had to give them my number. Felt tricked. They obviously wish to corroborate every possible aspect of an individual's life for some reason...

I bought an android tablet and too access the app market etc, I had to sign up for gmail, and I had to enter mobile for sign-up.
At least now, I can put Linux onto the tablet, and as my my phone and internet are up, I can change phone/net and ignore gmail