What do people who don't want to give out their phone number to email account provider do?

Fake number.

@ragingloli how do they know if the fake number belongs to someone else?

I have an extra Gmail account and its Google Voice number goes to voice mail, I use that for a unimportant callers.

For selling stuff on Craiglist, I buy temporary burner numbers with the Hushed phone app.

I give them business phone numbers.

Could just say they don’t have a phone number to give.

@AshlynM Just about every site these days requires a phone number and email address for access to the site. It’s getting ridiculous. Especially if you are hoping to shop on line and find something you can’t find. Even at the stores, they ask for a phone number, unless you pay by cash. I would boycott them but it would leave me with very little options to shop. I do my biggest shopping at stores that don’t require a card or a number, or an email, but sometimes I can’t find what I need in them, so I have to go to these annoying sites. It’s so they can call you and sell your number to telemarketers or send you solicitations by email.

Thank you all.

@AshlynM Thereis no such option, if you don’t have a phone number to give you can’t access your account, right?

@Pandora if you give them business phone numbers it better be where a you or a friend works at right? Otherwise what if they need to call that number because you lost your password or the correct password wouldn’t work because of hackers?
I agree with your last post though.

@flo Most of the times these sites just send crap to your email if they can’t reach you by phone. They never actually call you. I recently had to cancel something to an online site and I couldn’t even reach them by phone. The phone number they had was always busy. So I posted an email to them and that is how I finally got a response. They never said they tried to call me. They just sent me an email and the order was confirmed being canceled in my email. Which I prefer to someone telling me over the phone that it was canceled. They are always going to insist on an email and I really rather not have them send emails to my family and friends. That would suck.

@Pandora Yes, “if they can’t reach you by phone”. If they can’t reach you by phone you will have no access to your account.

I just found this:
https://www.lireo.com/free-email-services-that-dont-require-phone-verification/

“We and our partners store and/or access information on a device, such as unique IDs in cookies to process personal data. You may accept or manage your choices by clicking below or at any time in the privacy policy page. These choices will be signaled to our partners and will not affect browsing data.Privacy Policy
We and our partners process data to provide:

Use precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Store and/or access information on a device. Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development.”

“Edit settings”…...“Agree and continue”
That’s from Mail.com by the way.