I remember back in the earlier part of this decade, I could set up emails willy-nilly, and without the need of identification. Not so easy anymore. With hotmail, I've noticed that on rare random occasions, that it doesn't request a phone number from you in the registering process. At one point I (with difficulty), bought a sim card anonymously, so that I could that to set up email accounts. But now the cell phone provider has somehow blocked that I identify myself!! Bastards! Anyway, thanks for reading, and be good.
Oh fuck, it pisses me off when websites assume I have a cell phone or people think I have text. "maybe later", maybe NEVER you intrusive FUCKS!!! Security reasons my asshole!
I think it also though stop the fakers with multiple accounts and personalities. Like I noticed Hotmail and live.com use mobile phone numbers to link and do security checks.
mail.com and yandex.com and protonmail.com are at least some that doesn't require phone verification. And @Irminsul is right phone verification is mostly used to prevent spammers and scammers
Your question covers 3 separate issues. Firstly, the need for companies offering you a free email service. Like any business, they need to make some money. Advertising alone is not always covering their costs, because prices are dropping and since Google can offer such regionalized targeting for the advertisers, they are cornering the market. Therefore companies are looking to sell on phone numbers in order to pay the bills. The second point, is that under terrorism laws, providers have to demonstrate that they have taken reasonable care to prevent terrorism, drug smuggling and money laundering being untraceable The cellphone issue is quite different. Providers have to purchase blocks of numbers and these cost them money. With pay as you go sims, thousands of customers were loosing the phone, or simply buying a new sim when they were away from home or the sim itself was damaged. This resulted in numbers not being used for a period of time automatically cancelling and the number being reused after 12 weeks. Without this, the country was simply running out of numbers. A short call once a month prevents this from happening. Back to your email, one way of staying spam and advertising free is to purchase your own domain, but this will involve you installing an email server, which will also involve static IP being needed on your internet lines in order to receive emails directly.
Yeah I have the same problem when setting up Gmail account for my online shop, it keeps requiring my phone number and I was very hesitated to give. I found out there are many other email provider alternatives that we could sign up without a phone number. Yahoo is one, but it mostly related to spam. I haven't try Outlook mail yet but it should work.
The connection between my phone and the internet is almost spooky. Handy, but spooky. I have Gmail and an Android. So they "talk" to each other. Anyway, last month my mom came to visit and she emailed me her itinerary so I'd know when she was arriving, which gate, etc. The morning of her flight, my phone starts tracking it. You know, like every time Indiana Jones took a flight and and you saw his flight path progress across the map? It was like that. Her flight. On my phone. Nothing entered. I guess it just "read" my mom's email and thought, "she'll probably want to keep track of this flight." I don't know. It was kinda spooky.
Really! I did not realize that. I signed up with them a long time ago; though technically not before SMS messaging was introduced, long go enough that it wasn't used to verify email and the like. Well, I know Gmail is heavily integrated with Android and phones. I don't think I know of one in that case.