My last GMail account got spammed like hell, so I decided to register a new one. After filling out all of the required details, I pressed ''I accept, Create my account'' and then I got a page telling me to enter my mobile phone number to receive an SMS verification code.
This seems a little excessive. I am finding that Google is definitely straying from the ''Don't Be Evil'' policy that they always had. Why do they need my mobile number? They already have a full character profile made of me because of my search results.
In a way i think this is really good actually. This is the first i have heard of it though.
I think they are doing this because alot of spammers are using gmail as their email address as spam bots can break the gmail captcha to sign up. It made it hard for forums and websites to stop the spam coming from people registered with gmail addresses. Many real people use gmail therefore you can't ban the email domain. This meant spammers didn't have to worry about being blocked because of their email domain being banned.
Google are a very big company. What are they going to do with your mobile number? They aren't going to spam it with pointless texts and they are not going to sell it on are they. It is safe to give them. If it was a unknown email provider then i would say don't give your number out but google can be trusted. It will force spammers to know target another provider and if all the big providers follow suit, it will make it alot easier to block spammers as they would be forced to use non popular email provders that could be blocked without blocking any (or a small number) of real users.
This sounds kind of weird, do you have to own a mobile phone, or will a standard telephone work. It is like they are making it harder for people without cell phones to have google accounts.
