Ask HN: Why are more and more websites asking for phone numbers?
Some, outright demand it. This would be considered unacceptable just 2 years ago. They don't even pretend it's for 2FA now.
If your site does this and doesn't offer a actual phone call option, see if you can do something about it. A company I opened an account with a couple weeks ago almost lost our business over this -- seemed very unprofessional. I can guess why this company requires verification, its an attempt to stop bots from signing up en masse to get the small free portion of the service (first X amount was free, if I could script creation and use of 100 free accounts, I'd never need to pay them).
As much as you may consider it your human right to open thousands of new untraceable accounts per second with full functionality at zero cost, humoring you requires bending over backwards and resorting to a cat-and-mouse arms race of probabilistic anti-spam and anti-bot techniques. As the adversaries get good, it becomes more and more attractive to just require a phone number (and block well-known bulk suppliers of anonymous phone numbers like Google Voice, Twilio, and Flowroute).
I think this is actually a pretty reasonable arrangement. Someone motivated to stay pseudonymous can obtain a handful of extra phone numbers in a way that would take some effort to connect to his real identity. It's better than drivers license scans or credit card verification.
I think the only realistic alternative would be a proof-of-work scheme. This could protect privacy better, while still making it inordinately difficult to overwhelm a site operator with millions of pseudonyms for the same person. But there are no real standards here. More people have SMS than BTC.
But once you start to see spam or get spam messages from other users (imagine a dating site) you would like this spam to stop. Having a (unique) phone number a mandatory requirement during registration can make spam fighting much easier.
So yet again, someone who is determined to beat the system (usually an abuser) can do it.
Someone who simply wants to prevent their personal information being disseminated to the entire planet when your database is breached, gets fucked.
Many websites think that lots of users have multiple emails and thus maybe sign up twice. Again, it's only about convenience.
[Citation-needed] As someone who had been holding three different phone numbers at the same time, and who used to be accessible at about 10 different cellphone numbers, I feel you are mistaking your beliefs for facts.
[0] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2?end=2015&...
https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber/blob/master/FAL...
A more honest way of saying this would be that it wouldn't have worked -- requiring a phone number during onboarding would drastically lower your conversion rates. So what's changed? Is this a generational (grumble grumble millenial grumble grumble) thing?
Also, I'd love to know what sparked your asking this question. I don't see a particular uptick in services requiring a phone number for signup, which is something I'd have definitely noticed as I don't carry a phone.
As for the uptick in services requiring phone numbers? All the messaging apps, all the freelance websites, facebook, google, classified ad sites/apps. And these are just examples of things I tried using.
You guessed wrong. If I was trying to set up bots, why would I start blabbing about it on HN? Oh right, you assumed I'm like you.
Never before have I been asked for a phone number that hasn't been optional from any other service (of which I have quite a few, LastPass counts about 2,200 of them).
(Of course, sometimes I do still take the optional road, two factor authentication is exceptionally nice).
facebook, google, dropbox, evernote, github, gitlab, amazon, ...
Microsoft/Outlook is insufferably obnoxious in that regard, the last time I saw people signing up for it. At least Gmail asks for your number up front — Microsoft pretends you fucked up and weasels it out of you.
http://www.upcall.com is a thing.
Also, people are tired of bots signing up.
http://ringcaptcha.com is a thing.
In 7 years that I've been using it exclusively I must've seen barely 5-10 junk emails on the 2 iCloud accounts (6 addresses in all) that I use.
Poor Outlook on the other hand.. I check my old accounts for sentimental reasons once every few months, and they're still beleaguered by spam.
It's relatively common to have multiple email addresses. Fewer people buy extra SIM just to have a pseudonym.
If the website decides to sell your information to advertising companies, banks or insurance companies, they can use phone number to attach users even if the other identifying information is false or slightly different. It adds directly into the bottom line.
Carlos Danger needs dual SIM phone.