New top story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Google requiring phone number to log into Chromebook

Tell HN: Google requiring phone number to log into Chromebook
47 by pisky | 7 comments on Hacker News.
Long story short: bought a couple of Chromebooks over the years (as they're nice multi user machines), created Google accounts on each but never gave a phone number. Now after years of use, Google pops up an "unrecognized device" roadblock AFTER I enter the password to log in, with the message "enter a phone number to get a text message with a verification code". There is no mention of suspicious activity. The only trigger I can think of is a recent modem reset that changed my Public IP, and my new IP doesn't appear to resolve to my old physical location in Google's geoip db. Am I crazy or does this seem like an extremely cynical attempt to get more phone numbers? I don't even understand how giving them my phone number proves anything as I definitely did not ever give them one previously. Unfortunately burner phones are not available in my country, so that's not an option.