I’ve stopped using services that ask me for my phone number upon registration because they want to “verify that you’re a human and to prevent abuse” simply because they lie about how they’re gonna use that phone number.
They’re not just using it to send you a TOTP code. They keep your phone number linked to your account in their database.
When you create an account for ChatGPT they ask you to verify that you’re not a bot. Which is understandable. You’d hope they don’t save your phone number. But they do. Same goes for Discord. The screenshots clearly show that they do know what my phone number was.
I tried once for a year to do nothing that required a mobile number… By the end I was unable to make a doctors appointment (doctors office needed to send a confirmation via text or call) or log in to my bank (text only 2fa). I used only totp apps like aegis.
After that year i took a management position that requires me to be available by phone.
My dream is to one day go numberless and use a data only sim
