Google is silently linking your phone number across all signed-in accounts (androidauthority.com)

308 pointsby Brajeshwar6 hours ago80 comments

maxo133 5 hours ago

Google is probably the most aggressive anti-privacy big tech company currently operating.

No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.

The requirement to have a mobile device to scan a QR code to verify that you're human. Reverse SMS verification, where you have to send an SMS rather than receive a verification code. You think of signing up using a VPN server in another country? The phone number you use to send the SMS from must also be from that country.

Not being able to watch YouTube videos when using VPN - without signing in to a Google account, all under the guise of "bot protection."

Gemini not working in 3/4 of cases when using VPN.

It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.

I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.

PS. The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google

fred_is_fred 5 hours ago

More data = better ad sales.

baggachipz 4 hours ago

line go up

burningChrome 5 hours ago

Trying to fight it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. I carry two phones now - since I have my "privacy" enabled phone that basically has nothing on it. Email, messages, weather app and a few privacy enabled browsers. My other phone has all my "faux" google stuff on it. Maps, gmail, banking apps, my authenticator apps, music apps, etc.

Even then, these can all be tied together fairly easy, but just trying to make it harder to keep my data private is such a battle; and friends always ask me why I spend so much time trying to keep myself anonymous when in 2026 its virtually impossible to do so.

I always tell them: “Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” (To live well is to live concealed.)

Waterluvian 4 hours ago

This all sounds completely sensible. And yet, being caught by the police with two phones would probably be a big stupid red flag for them.

mixdup 4 hours ago

Having two phones is more common than you think, and has a very plausible explanation even if it's not true for the particular individual: One is my work phone, issued by my company, other one is mine

That happens all the time

noah_buddy 3 hours ago

Unless you’re clever about setting up the phones to match your excuse, you are now lying to the police as well.

SllX 3 hours ago

Follow the usernames in the response chain. I have two phones for the exact same reason as well: work issued & personal. It would hold up just because it’s actually true. There’s no need to arrange anything beyond how they are naturally arranged.

Brian_K_White 3 hours ago

It's crazy that the police can lie to you.

By rights the simple comeback is they can lie to you so F'em.

The real answer is you don't offer any explaination because it's not something you need to explain or get anyone's permission for.

Feel free to wonder. Give me a hard time and I'll just do my best to give you a hard time back. After you confiscate my stuff and detain me and I turn out not to have broken any laws, I'll do everything I can think of to extract an apology and compensation and penalty. Afro Man is my hero. You will become my new career.

That's my little fantasy anyway but I do see it as a duty to at least resist a little. In reality I'll fold pretty easy but I will be as much sand in the gears as I can.

Teever 2 hours ago

Incorporate and have the phone be owned by your corporation. You're a contractor who separates business from pleasure.

bryanrasmussen 2 hours ago

depending on where you are it may be legal to lie to the police.

achenet 2 hours ago

I think this is the time to share this classic PSA about why you should always exercise your right to silence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Benard-dev an hour ago

In Uganda carrying two phones is completely normal. Many people have one for work and one for personal use, or simply because they can afford a second phone. Police wouldn't think twice about it.

lostlogin 36 minutes ago

40 minutes, and not a single ‘I’m moving to Uganda’ message.

ProblemExplorer 4 hours ago

> I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.

Every scammer, fraudster, scammer-in-training, fraudster-in-training, uses a Google account.

The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google because that's the start of their lead into their investigation. Google needs to provide answers, sometimes by regulation in countries.

ninininino 4 hours ago

Have you noticed the front page article sharing front page real estate with this one about Big Tech getting in trouble for not doing more to stop scamming and fraudsters?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/14/dating-app-s...

Regulators want Big Tech to stop children from doing various things (such as access certain platforms or content), to stop fraudsters and scammers, to stop foreign intelligence operations or bots from astroturfing social media/manipulating social discourse, and so on.

Failing to so leads to inquiries, new laws or regulations, fines, and so on.

The technical solutions to combat these problems are the exact solutions that also ruin privacy for users, create friction at account creation time, require ever more draconian identity verification methods and so on. It's 1:1.

"I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities."

It's really not any more complicated than that Governments have told them its time to start violating users privacy in order to combat these other problems.

bsammon 4 hours ago

> It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.

A process I've gone through a few times (though I didn't actually want a Google Account):

1) Get a new (second-hand sometimes) ChromeOS or Android device.

2) (if necessary) do a power-wash or factory-reset.

3) Do the "set up a new device" process.

4) When it asks you for a Google account, click on the "I don't have one. create a new account" button.

In all these cases, the device didn't (or couldn't, in the case of the Chromebook) have a SIMcard in it, so it couldn't link it to a phone number.

One smartphone that I bought for $20, and never (IIRC) had a SIMCard in, I think the only identity-oriented app I have on it is Netflix. I've wondered if Google links the smartphone's google account to the Netflix account (which is actually not me, but a cousin's), and whether Netflix is complicit in this linking.

BizarroLand 4 hours ago

I imagine that Google is keeping a log of the ip addresses that phone reports when it's connected to wifi. I There's probably some overlay between you and your known associates / locations.

xnickb 3 hours ago

Even if they don't, the law enforcement definitely does (or rather requires your ISP to).

So depending on who you are trying to protect against you are in for varying amounts of fun.

Terr_ an hour ago

They also log all the locations where anybody's phone encountered an SSID.

It's unclear whether an SSID suffixed with _nomap truly opts out of the collection, or whether it simply opts out of later sharing.

jstanley 4 hours ago

> The requirement to have a mobile device to scan a QR code to verify that you're human.

FWIW I've never seen this.

rwmj 4 hours ago

It's required for setting up a new Youtube account now.

foresto 3 hours ago

> It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.

I had a Gmail account before they required phone numbers. One day, Google stopped allowing me to log in, demanding my phone number if I wanted to continue. Nothing was wrong with my credentials, or behavior patterns, or IP address, or anything at all. My already-registered recovery email address didn't help. There was no way to appeal.

I'm not willing to have my phone number extorted from me, so I sighed and accepted that I'll never again have use of that account. It remains a constant source of irritation, because it still forwards incoming messages to my home email address, and Google doesn't do a very good job of filtering out all the spam before they forward it my way.

Adding insult to injury, Google still (years later) hasn't made good on their announcement that idle accounts would be deleted. I wish they would. I'm done with Google.

david_allison 2 hours ago

> Google still (years later) hasn't made good on their announcement that idle accounts would be deleted.

They should be after 2 years, I occasionally get emails, linking: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290

shevy-java 3 hours ago

> No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation

Dunno. Facebook is pretty ruthless and evil here as well.

genxy an hour ago

Google is better at it, they goon from the closest while Meta just pulls up a seat.

_s_a_m_ 3 hours ago

> Google is probably the most aggressive anti-privacy big tech company currently operating

isnt that their only business model almost from day 1? Everyone shitting on Meta because of privacy but Google's the worst.

achenet 2 hours ago

the original business model was, if I'm not mistaken, licensing the search technology.

Then they found that showing ads with the search results made them a lot more money.

They started optimizing for money made from ads, which depends on user data - letting advertisers show ads to targeted customers.

happymellon 3 hours ago

Gemini doesn't work 10/10 times for me.

Recently its taken over and I can't switch back to Assistant on Android. Now I have timers that run for a bit and then disappear, and whenever I'm driving and use voice to call it brings up the phone number and requires me to press again to dial.

Absolutely frustrating and I don't understand how this can be pushed as the default.

I can only assume its another scenario where they disable all the features because I'm not in the US, but then never tested it.

jambalaya8 3 hours ago

Google discontinued Assistant in the first week of September, 2026; it was ostensibly 'replaced' by Gemini then. They should have allowed both until the kinks were worked out of Gemini.

happymellon 43 minutes ago

Unfortunately voice control of my phone died on that date too.

Thanks Google.

axus 3 hours ago

Meta is worse, but easier to ignore.

someothherguyy 2 hours ago

> No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.

meta comes to mind? you can't even interact with their services unless you have an account, and they ban you if you don't reveal yourself transparently. then they ask you for a state-issued ID to appeal bans. seems like some great lengths to me.

margalabargala an hour ago

I agree. Meta is as bad as if not worse than Google.

It is however much easier to navigate life without Meta than without Google. Even if you use different email, etc, if you collaborate with someone on a doc or whatever they are likely to send you a google link.

throw7 2 hours ago

Age verification is pretty aggressive... recently tried creating a youtube account (google) and they require gov't id/facecheck/creditcard? once you hit age restricted content.

genxy an hour ago

They also attached to a VERY HIGH NUMBER of ip addresses when you launch Chrome. Run an application level firewall and look at Chrome's behavior on startup. So many that I think they are geolocating users, even across VPNs

m463 8 minutes ago

Do you say google over meta because meta has a smaller footprint?

also: you can subscribe to duckduckgo ($99 or $199/year) and that gives you not only VPN access, but DDaaS - Data Deletion as a Service.

(don't know how data deletion works outside of california, but I think california allows global deletion now)

declan_roberts 3 hours ago

It really bothers me that every dick and jane website has normalized asking for your personal phone number. It's the first thing they ask when you sign up. At this point your phone number has become your social security number of the internet.

I don't care if fighting fraud is hard for you. Figure it out without stripping away my privacy.

Cider9986 2 hours ago

Yeah, phone numbers are essentially KYC. I use a phone number verification site, but I can't recommend them because they stopped accepting Monero recently.

For long term numbers I would use jmp.chat.

pkulak an hour ago

Google knows all about virtual phone numbers and won't accept them. If you don't have a number issued by a large telco, forget about creating a Google account.

Cider9986 an hour ago

JMP is a real carrier number so it should work better for 2fa than VoIP numbers.

I haven't used it yet, but I'm switching to it once my current plan runs out. There's plenty of options for data.

maherbeg an hour ago

I agree with this. They should have to keep some insane bond for every phone number they keep to pay out when there is a data leak.

Plasmoid an hour ago

A lot of them also block voip numbers. This is obviously just a way to collect cell numbers that are easy to send spam SMS messages to.

_ink_ 36 minutes ago

It's super annoying, because it's normally also a path for account recovery. So if you need to change your number, good luck remembering where you have signed up with it.

rdtsc 5 hours ago

That's why I stay away from trying Gemini or doing anything much with Google until I still host my main gmail account there. One misstep and I'll find myself locked out. Because it's Google's job to spy on everyone, if I have other accounts there, those will also locked out too ("oh! you're trying to circumvent our ban? we noticed!" kind of a thing). Then the only recourse from what I understand is to make an HN post and hope it makes it to the front page and someone from Google who knows someone else at Google will help you.

SoftTalker 3 hours ago

The biggest player in ad tech also being the biggest provider of mobile phone operating systems and web browser and web search and email services was only ever going to end up this way. I'm not a big fan of regulation but at some point a single corporate entity should not be allowed to control all of the things.

rlpb an hour ago

I always assumed that if I add other Google accounts to my Android phone then they'd be linked together, so I avoided doing it. It's a pain because Google apps require it. For example I can't join a Google Meet from my phone for this reason because I've always kept the Google account I use for email separate from the Google account I use for Android (and then K-9 Mail via IMAP to access it to avoid connecting them there).

Ironically this means that my experience with Google apps on my Android phone has always been poor but other vendors' stuff work fine. For example I use Fastmail for some key email addresses and this works well for me whereas I cannot use the Gmail app.

I guess I made the right choice.

minimaxa 35 minutes ago

When Google did a backroom deal with Dun & Bradstreet for business verification, it was the nail in the coffin for this overly bureaucratic turd.

Can't wait for the open-source release of Google on GitHub.

jhallenworld an hour ago

The problem this can cause is that it could become the root identity for the effective social credit system. For example, if Uber bans you (it happens..), you might need a new phone number and email to get around it. At least you can get around it for now.

exabrial 4 hours ago

Our corporate policy doesn't allow personal phones to be linked to corp accounts, for obvious reasons. We have no idea what kind of security your personal phone number has setup, nor do we compensate employees for their personal phones, nor do we want corporate communications happening on your personal device (work/life separation).

If the vendor is unable to comply, all we're using them for is email. Time to look elsewhere.

Cider9986 2 hours ago

Sure, it's bad Google is anti-privacy and they're trying to stop you making an anonymous account, but that is their business model.

You're much better off using and supporting privacy focused services [1] instead of trying to make Google private. I do not have any Google accounts I depend on–I deleted all of them that I'd used personally, and now I only have attempts at anonymous accounts.

I wouldn't rely on them even if I wasn't constantly getting banned because they have no customer support, no E2EE, they scan your photos, it's insanity.

[1] https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/

jamiesonbecker 5 hours ago

Very unexpected behavior, esp for those with several accounts and phone numbers, intending to keep them separate for security or other reasons.

weezing 4 hours ago

People who want security don't use multiple google accounts tho.

gpvos an hour ago

Well, they might use zero Google accounts. There is no real difference between one or multiple accounts, security-wise, unless you are very diligent about using different VPNs and such.

iJohnDoe 9 minutes ago

Of course they are. What else are those highly paid developers going to do with their time? Utilize their resources to help humanity or more invasion of privacy?

Havoc 4 hours ago

Yay surveillance state pushed by ad tech!

chneu 4 hours ago

Um, I think you mean convenience at the cost of privacy, which most people have no problem with, unfortunately.

Think of how nice this will be for all the people who don't care and have given up! So convenient.

Scaled 5 hours ago

This is an outrageous privacy invasion and if it's not illegal already, it should be.

toomuchtodo 5 hours ago

Report to your state's privacy department (if applicable) and your Attorney General. No guarantees, but once it's in regulator hands, you can let them run with it.

https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/

hoppyhoppy2 5 hours ago

I think it's creepy and bad, but "silently" is not accurate, at least in my case: Google sent each of my accounts an email telling me about it.

tgv 5 hours ago

That's mighty generous of them. Does the mail contain an opt-out link?

dsvf an hour ago

In fact yes, my email did contain clear instructions: "You can manage this setting anytime on your $Phone_Model by going to Settings > Google services > All services > Phone number verification."

gpvos an hour ago

Of course they do, I never expected anything else. That's why I never gave it to them for any of my accounts with them (that I barely use anyway).

PerilousD 3 hours ago

Its taking me awhile (about a month so far) but Im migrating my Google Pixel 5A to Google Pixel 10 Pro and GraphenOS. Its a step but seriously worth it to avoid the Google stink. RFC messaging is the only real breakage Ive seen so far in that folks that have me in a group msg dont work any more (actually that COULD work as a feature and so far everyone Ive talked to that swear they sent a msg are iPhone users so it could be another Google-Apple pissing contest underway.

anygivnthursday 4 hours ago

Is it silent, though? I got notifactions about it on my devices, then emails on each account. Then I went straight to delete the added numbers and disabled this "feature". It did not leave a good taste that I had to do this after the fact, I would have appreciated a notice with a chance to opt out first, because they may have already permanently stored those numbers in some internal history (I just asked Dropbox for my data and they listed every single email I've ever used on that account too). But, to be honest, I am not surprised, and I already consider all devices and numbers that ever come into contact with a Google account being permanently on record on some Google server.

sicktriple an hour ago

I'm sorry, did anyone assume this wasn't the case?

plorg 4 hours ago

Just the other day I tried to log into the Google account I have connected only to this HN account, and Google asked me to use the account linked to the backup email address on that account to verify my login, then logged me into that account on my phone when I used it to verify my login. After that point I saw my phone number attached to the HN-specific Gmail account, though it may have been attached before.

barrkel 4 hours ago

This isn't the behavior I observe on my phone.

All my SIMs I've used in my phone seem to have been added as verified phone numbers to my primary account, but my secondary accounts don't have any phone numbers still.

It's still somewhat obnoxious since it means random travel sims that could get reused after they expire are "verified" for my account.

superkuh 34 minutes ago

Google is not so silently deleting the accounts (gmail, etc) of anyone that has not given them a phone number to link and generate information sales profit from. It happened to my gmail account and there was nothing I could do, short of supplying a phone number, to stop it.

Stop using google services for your personal stuff. I know many can't avoid it at work, but personally, we all can.

shevy-java 3 hours ago

Daily Evil by Google.

Anyone still having doubts about this company? To be fair: the US corporations all do that. I remember how Facebook linked off-connection data together. They are all operating in the same manner here, sustaining US spy interests.

dn3500 2 hours ago

I felt a bit betrayed when I discovered that Facebook has a list of the people I have communicated with on Whatsapp, and was sharing this list with their advertisers. Not just the phone numbers, but the Facebook accounts. My Whatsapp is not associated with Facebook in any way except that they have the same phone number, and I do not have Facebook on my phone.

jabroni_salad 4 hours ago

I don't think this is new. If you have ever gotten a "fuck off and die" letter from AdSense after like 2010 or so, then you know they will correlate your identity and ban your other accounts too. They don't ban accounts, they ban people.

I've also heard of people getting oopsied trying to farm the GCP demo credits and someone on HN once claimed that a company's gsuite tenant was actioned when they hired somebody on google's naughty list.

nateweber 3 hours ago

More companies have my phone number than not..

GrumpyGoblin 4 hours ago

No shit