So your accounts will be retroactively and publicly correlated for time immemorial when discord’s database gets dumped?

Using phone numbers for human verification is lazy and needlessly intrusive.

I don’t thinks so… it’s relatively difficult to get different phone numbers so it’s a good way to limit spam.

Plus in the real world, it’s also a way of separating your identities. I have a work number and personal number, and only attach the work number to business services. Sure, it won’t prevent Google from banning all your accounts but for everyone else it’s a hard barrier to correlating that you are the same person. Added to the fact that my work laptop uses VPN, and I’m pretty sure that sites like GitHub have no idea I have multiple accounts.

Does Discord store the number alongside your account? The smart way to prevent issues with associating accounts by phone number is to only store the link up until the account is verified. After that, they don't need the number linked to the account. The number just has to be stored in a list alongside the last time it successfully validated an account, and then only stay in there until the cooldown period expires.

Given that the smart way is to not ask for phone numbers in the first place, I wouldn't assume anything.

It does.