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Comment by jraph | Hacker News Reader

and without using something personal like your email address to download programs, which should be granted and was before mobile OSes. And still is on regular computers.

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That's not really true, you can make a throwaway Gmail account in about 5 minutes. Make one per Android device, throw the login details into a password manager and forget about it. I've done this for several Android devices now and never run into any issues.

Ironically when I tried to set up a legitimate Gmail account for my business and used it to set up several accounts, within few days it got locked with no recourse for unlocking - there was a comment box where I could beg for an unlocking, never even got a response though. So Gmail is only for throwaway accounts from now on.

Is it possible without a phone number or other forms of near PII?

Yes, I have created several Google accounts without having to give real PII (Google requires a first name, last name, and a birthday)

Have you tried it recently? I believe they require a phone number now.

I've done it within the last year.

And it didn't ask for your phone number?

Maybe it's location specific then or something...

Nope. It is likely dependent on your IP reputation. If your IP has bad reputation they are likely to be more strict.

Yes, if you control for your source IP address. For example, I couldn't find anything from a quick search on whether Tor exit nodes are blocked (or use requires other PII to be supplied).

All you get asked today (at least in Australia on a residential ISP) is a first name, last name, password, date of birth and gender (includes "prefer not to say").

Years ago I think you were correct, a phone number and SMS verification check was mandated, and each phone number could only be used so many times on different accounts.

[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/gmail-without-phone-number-...

I still need a phone number if I don’t sign up with a residential IP.

No, I'm still required to provide a phone number. This has something to do with my browser/system/ip fingerprint, because a friend of mine can make a google account for me from his googled phone on chrome just fine, yet when I try to log into it from my degoogled phone on firefox from my place, it asks for a phone number.

It's about as awful as discord, who also locks account creation behind providing a phone number when an account is created from my residential IP. It almost feels like I've tripped some prevention mechanisms that all these companies are sharing and I have no idea of how to get my "goodness" score back up.

> you can make a throwaway Gmail account in about 5 minutes

You should not have too, though. And as the discussion shows, Google requiring a phone number depends on luck.

When two postal-code locations (e.g., day and night, home and work) are sufficient to specifically identify 90% of the population, and with Android devices being infested with location-tracking capabilities (above and beyond GPS), creating a pseudonymous account != hiding your identity from Google (or whomever else it shares data with, intentionally/willingly or otherwise).

As I've noted previously (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30953159>), I recall but cannot find the 2-ZIP-code example, though a paper describing four location points IDing 95% of the population uniquely is here: <https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01376>

ZIP + gender + date of birth is another highly-effective identifier, with 87% accuracy:

"What Information is "Personally Identifiable"?", by Seth Schoen: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/what-information-perso...>

Latanya Sweeney, Computational Disclosure Control: A Primer on Data Privacy Protection (Thesis, 1977, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

<https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priv...>

"ZIP ruled personally identifying in California" (2011) <https://www.identityblog.com/?p=1168>

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