I did it. Then they banned it.

Having my phone number or any other hard identifier is none of Googles business.

I have a google account without a phone number, but it's always been that way so they probably aren't going to ban me... I hope at least until I finish migrating

They do that if:

1. You don't log in from a first world IP (the terminology from their user operations team), but previous logins were from them.

2. You registered from an IP in a country where they don't have access to sending SMS, but they go to a country where they have.

3. Bot detection algo flagged you, and bot detection algo are one of their crown jewels that they don't tell to support people.

They could lock you out of your account and require your number before letting you log in again. Any day.

Happened to me.

They didn't ban your account for not having a phone number.

What else? I was creating this for Youtube videos for my son. When we were about to upload a video, it was already banned.

I dunno, but you weren't banned for not having a phone number attached to your account, because I and many others have accounts without phone numbers and are not banned.

It may depend on the time frame and geolocation. I tried to do this about 6 months ago.

I have also an old account that does not have a phone number and it is functional.

What I was describing was a creation of a new account.

I'm not Google customer support, but I'll repeat for a third time; you were not suspended because you didn't provide a phone number.

I think you've made your opinion clear. Why continue to try pushing it as fact? There are a thousand factors at play in spam/fraud/whatever detection, how can you possibly say with a straight face that you're certain the phone number is not a leading reason?

It may be that this persons knows something more that we do not (does not seem to be the case) or has very different experience.

I do not mind this. It is indeed possible that the cause of the ban originated from some other source as from entered personal details and sequence of actions.

It actually motivates me to create another experiment.

While this statement will be really buried, it reminds me that we still should be thankful that we can somewhat conceal our identity as a private enterprise can be much more unforgiving that the state.

From what I can tell from a few days ago, you can't create a new account without a phone number.

From just now, I went to gmail.com and created a new account without entering a phone number or email address.

I then went to Youtube and uploaded a video.

I signed out, then in again. Google asked for a number and recovery email, but let me press "Done" without providing one.

I'll sign in later from a different IP, and see what happens.

Edit: I've come across [1], which says a phone number is required to upload videos longer than 15 minutes to YouTube, or in some cases to upload anything.

[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/171664

It's not my opinion, it is fact. There was a reason he was suspended, and it is not his phone number not being attached to his account.

Also, I didn't say anything about leading reason.

> it is fact

No, it's a hasty generalization[1] where personal experience is assumed to match other cases.

Of course Google could have simply stated the reason for the suspension clearly, if they weren't so reliably opaque in support and service management issues,

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization

So perhaps you will care to elaborate this a bit more?

So who are you then? :)

But I am willing to create another more controlled experiment.

I'm concerned about your ability to control the necessary variables. For example, any one of your anti-tracking measures (you're big into Internet privacy, yes?) may be triggering the suspension.

My only concern in that point of time was giving out the phone number, as it will give Google an unique identifier without the ISP and state cooperation. As such I did not use any additional measures.

I am grateful of your comments as it will motivate me to give it another try.

Btw. in fact I do not use regularly any anti tracking measurements. I am only protecting the local businesses against their own stupidity.

I really would like to keep visiting my favorite supermarket regardless of their decision to include their video ads into the Youtube videos I happen to watch time to time. Some careless fools already lost me as an client, I would not like to let this happen again.

Do you disagree with their right to specify the terms of use as to include a phone number, or do you just not like the rule?

I think that giving such agencies the power to identify unique individuals is not beneficial for the humankind.

I did it recently, and burned myself, because I forgot my password and had no way of recovering the account. As far as I know, my account isn't banned, though.

I moved country, and had to wait to visit the country I registered in to get the account back.

It probably depends on your IP address, country and maybe something else. Some time ago I was unable to register on youtube without providing a phone number, and earlier I have registered a Google Account from Android emulator that was instantly blocked. Maybe it is because of spam, or maybe because lot of people are using the same IP address.