Google deleting all recently inactive accounts without phone number

I've often read that 2FA should be through an authenticator app or a physical key, not via texting a code to a phone number. Malicious sim swapping is a thing, so purposely deleting any phone number from an account should be good practice, right?

So will they also delete inactive accounts that have no phone number, but one or more phone-less 2FA methods associated?

It's phonishness. Your life isn't real unless you have a smartphone -- at least that's the way "the empire" sees it.

> This is a very shady dark pattern by Alphabet corporation.

Advertising company (Doubleclick [1]) wants phone numbers to better target ads. No surprise there.

[1] The company currently calling itself Google is not the same Google as yesteryear. In 2008 Google purchased Doubleclick, and what happened is that the advertising rot from Doubleclick ate Google from the inside out. What we have now calling itself Google is actually all the evil that was Doubleclick, only calling itself Google. That's why the Google motto no longer includes "Don't be evil".

if you haven't cared about using an account for a year, why do you want to use it all of a sudden now?

Steam gave me similar problems. In the process of trying to get in for the first time in a while to delete my account, I completed a successful 2FA but still couldn't log in because I had to prove I owned the account by providing extra information.

We've fallen so far from the days when the retailer let you just have the game you bought and then they were out of the picture forever.

Yes, I’ve lost access to two old accounts including my old blogger one. When I try to log in it sends email saying, “someone tried to log in with your password!” :-/

Not providing your phone number is a critical step in protecting yourself against sim swap attacks and other vulnerabilities.

There's no reason to use Google over ProtonMail or Tuta Mail if you care about user experience. Google's customer support is non-existent, while Proton and Tuta will get you a real human for any problems and are accountable.

put my same phone number on 10+ google accounts, if you're skipping this you look like a bot, how should google be able to tell you apart from all of the bots.

This is a transparent ploy to collect personal information to feed the beast. Google wants to invade user privacy by requiring a phone number and dares to say it's for security reasons! What doublespeak is this?

People need to deGoogle themselves. Also they need to deMeta themselves. Go read what Obi-Wan Kenobi said about the Mos Eisley Space Port.

Google is no different than Meta. Both collect as much personal information they can about Internet users even when they don't have an account with them. The business model is to monetize this data by selling it to data brokers directly, to sell targeted ads using the data and to quietly make it available to authoritarian governments so that privacy laws are not enacted to make surveillance capitalism illegal.

Go with Kagi and Apple.

Google is also extremely interested in my home address…

perhaps they are planning for the eventuality that long-lifespan unused accounts become a commodity, an easy way to avoid age verification.

Why do people even need a Google account? There is a ton of alternatives that are privacy respecting. If you need throwaway accounts, you buy them, that's <$1 (For example for Youtube usage), you wouldn't want to link every videos you've watched in your life with your real identity, that seems reckless, at least to me, virtually no point of using your "real account" with those use cases.