> To have a mobile phone number, you need your passport or ID.

Not in the UK you don't. I can order a bunch of free sims with fake names and addresses and get them. I've got about 20 from EE, gifgaff, Vodafone, NanoSim, O2, etc.

So by your logic. I can create fake facebook and email from a free SIM of a number that has no connection to me.

Every system has a weakspot. You just need to know how to exploit it.

except that your mobile provider can probably localize you to within tens if meters. If you use modern tech, there's no real anonymity - just degrees of difficulty.

obviously the idea is to dispose of the sim after you've used it to create the account.

We seem to be in agreement.

> To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail (the most popular choice).

> but then you again can also get IDs and fake passports easily in China if you want.

I agree to a certain extent that your passport is indirectly linked to these online services.

Where I don't agree is that you can still use an email service that doesn't require you to provide your phone numbers and you can use it to sign up for Facebook (not a legal offence, there is still a way to access the service).

Use of fake passports is a criminal offence (And there isn't a viable alternative to use the service without committing a criminal offence).

To not use real names on Facebook seems to be a violation of ToS as well, and you still need to verify real names in order to use pseudonym:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_cont...

Still, it's not a criminal offense to violate TOS. Worst case your account gets deactivated.

> To have an email, you still need a mobile phone number to register for gmail

So don't use gmail?

That wasn't hard, was it?

So, you are not actively using a Google account?

It is one thing to have alternatives, but to actually execute the switch to alternatives seems near impossible. Breaking away from Google is already hard, breaking away from Google + Facebook (which has your phone number on WhatsApp) seems impossible.

Not to sound too personal, but I thought everyone pretty much gave in to Google already.

If one is not in android ecosystem, then they can live without a gmail account. No need to be a savvy user at all.

I doubt even a majority of HN has Facebook accounts and Gmail for email.

A lot of us use services like Fastmail, Protonmail for email and simply do not use Facebook. Gmail is so bad it's not even usable for me in comparison to how it was several years ago.

Changing your email account is easier than you think, especially if you already use Password Managers like most of HN will be doing. You can redirect email from Gmail to your new email address, and at your new email provider put a footer into your every sent email which states you've switched to this new email address. I advise backing up your email from Gmail using Thunderbird just in case, but personally I've never had to access the backup, it's really much easier than you imagine.

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Actually I'm talking about Google account and services in general, not just gmail. Google account also exists as an IAM service for various Google branded products, such as YouTube, and a lot of other external services, which use Google account as the preferred or only authentication method. It is much harder to break those once you are locked in.

Agree on Youtube, getting away from it is much harder because the expense of mass data storage causes a natural monopoly to form.

I suspect it will ultimately be upended through a deeper change, likely with agent based computation.

Wrong assumption. There's loads of people out there without a Google-account.

And those are the more savvy users who actually care about their privacy a lot.

If I may draw another parallel:

There are also loads of people out there who can migrate out of the system (China/Google) if they don't like. And those who stay with the system (China/Google) seems to be fine with the system knowing their identity.

Are you calling my old dad, with his yahoo account, or my other colleagues in marketing with live/hotmail accounts "tech savvy"? What a about my Hungarian relatives with freemail or humail? What about fastmail?

People on HN are terrible with email. How on earth is it possible to think Gmail is the only option for email, a decentralized, standardized service? How ignorant do you have to be to make that assumption?

"you can also get IDs and fake passports easily in China if you want"

I've lived in China for 7 years, and your statement surprised me. Care to share more information to support this claim? I'm genuinely curious.

In Zhongguancun in some shady stall on a very high or low e-mall floor, you can get lots of forged documents, including diplomas, IDs, passports, ....

Or at least you used to be able to. As with other commerce, I think this is all done online now.

IDs? You mean forged 身份证? That's the only ID that matters if you're in China unless you're a foreigner.

It sounds hard to fake a 身份证 because there are systems to validate their info. You'd get caught pretty quickly.

Oh, anything can be faked even if it isn't faked well. They work as long as the numbers aren't verified.

There was something about how Wen Jiabao's mom's ID number must have been stolen to drive a billion dollar empire...so, at least as far as the government officials are concerned, it happens (or to say, they use it as an excuse).

According to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1733224?hl=en a mobile phone number is optional when signing up for Gmail.

I'm not sure I agree with that answer. I just tried signing up to test this and after submitting was asked for a phone number to verify. The first form didn't require a phone but after that it redirected to a page with a link to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/114129?hl=en&ctx=... that referencing GSuite verification.

I feel like this is a very recent change; I've definitely created "burner" gmail accounts in the past and I don't remember providing my cell phone number.

Yep, same here. For me it had to be at least 5 years ago.

Yes, but they will link you to a mobile number and then require that you confirm your number on grounds that they cannot identify you from your login. Gmail did not have my number confirmed until I moved and they locked me out of my email, despite answering all security questions. Theory and practice can be very different.

You are right. Many bad assumptions were made by me today.

I found it interesting to read that GMAIL can be quite anal about account creation. I have one from years back. Hardly ever use it. But I have noticed that GMAIL accounts seem to be the email service of choice on Craigslist (Casual Encounters). I better explain myself here. I live in area that is well protected by the police. But one night I went out to pick up a pizza, halftime, and I was outside by my car waiting, and was approached by a Lady of the Evening. I was kind of stunned. So I started monitoring Craigslist. I said all this to bring up my experiences with Outlook.com. I set up 3 accounts, all using the "Alternate email address" option. One for my father, stop his griping about GMAIL, one for a friend to keep in touch while I was on a roadtrip in Oregon, and another one for me. Once set up, I tested them out, send/recieve an email. Within few days, all were "Temporarily Suspended", for some unspecified "possible" violation of ToS. To unlock them I would be require to provide a text able phone number to recieve an activation code, and require to use the code within 10 minutes. Now I did not create these accounts all at once, there were months in between. I am just waiting for the day, when my other accounts, which I have had for years, multiple accounts were needed in the days before email aliases, to recieve the same treatment. So I am not really hot on the idea of providing them my phone number, especially after this type of treatment. Therefore, what they call "burner phone", I guess is the solution. Suggestions would be appreciated on a "burner phone". I remember years ago, when there was talk of the government controlling the internet, and websites protested by turning their backgrounds to black. That today there are many large tech companies now applying their own version of privacy invasion (tracking) and censorship.

http://www.salon.com/2017/08/23/mark-zuckerberg-might-be-the...

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/when-si...

Note that Facebook is a private company, not a country. They can require whatever they want.

ID for a cell number is certainly not a requirement in the US. Or anywhere in Western Europe. Or Canada. Or Mexico. Or anywhere in South America. So where are you talking about that being a requirement ?

France:

http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/France

Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece:

https://www.miteksystems.com/blog/mobile-identity-verificati...

US maybe soon:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/4886

It's trivial to get a SIM from another EU country.

pretty much anywhere in Asia for instance.