OK, so I have a fake Facebook account, solely because that's the only way I can follow the development of a product I'm interested in. When I went there to look for news I was met by this (translated to English). It's not optional! I don't get in if I don't give them my phone number. Dream on...


When you add your number here, Facebook can use it to help you log in, protect our community, correctly calculate how many people use our services and help you access Facebook and selected applications, but not for other purposes such as suggest friends or show ads. Only you can see the number in your profile. If this number is listed in any of Facebook's products, it may be used for other purposes including suggesting friends and displaying ads.

When will it stop?

Oops! Looks like it started over a year ago already. But I haven't encountered it until now. Maybe they started in US and now it's time for the rest of the world.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/03/facebook-...number-look-up/

"Last year, Facebook was forced to admit that after months of pestering its users to switch on two-factor by signing up their phone number, it was also using those phone numbers to target users with ads. "

Who would have thought...

Some years ago, Microsoft started to lock me out from their email service unless I submitted a phone number (it was somehow possible to circumvent this, thanks to a bug?). Then they gave up on that, but instead forced me to submit a backup email account. I obediently created such a backup account, only to be locked out from it due to unknown reasons. The result: I can use the first account, but if I'll ever need the second backup one they won't let me until I submit my phone number to it.

Good that you quoted it, my first browser got stuck in a "no cookie loop" and the ad blocker in my second browser refused to load the page altogether.

It's worse. I wanted to unsubscribe from their emails since I can't get in to read posts anyway. I clicked the unsubscribe link but lo and behold, I need to enter my phone number first. So, to sum it up, I can't unsubscribe or delete my account with them without giving them my phone number.

So they tried to do it too? What crap the web is becoming.

On a brighter note, when I woke up today I had no internet access. I figured out the fault wasn't with my provider. For the first time ever I got a useful result when I ran the Windows troubleshooter. A legible error message that I could google, found the solution and the problem was gone in no time. That's the first time ever for whatever reason I've used a troubleshooter! Previously it has always been no error found or that Windows can't solve the problem, something like that. I've come to think of that button as pure therapy, I don't expect anything from it, but click it anyway.

Does all this happen with your mobile or desktop browser (I trust you're not using their own FB app for mobile)? Maybe FB reacts differently to how you access them. But it could also be that FB considers it "suspicious" if you try to login from different devices (I recall one online service use to complain about me using a suspicious new device every time it update my web browser ). Or maybe FB gives up their attempts eventually.

The funny things is, if they suspect me of not being legit, how would it help if the non-legit me submitted a phone number?


Congratulations! I can't remember that ever happening to me.

Only desktop. Tried to just go the the group in question with Edge that has never been logged in. Same thing. So it seems you also now need to be subscribed to be able to read anything at all.

MS? I guess they just want to spam your phone or be sure of you identity so the data they have about you increases in value. If you are legit or not as in running pirated or legal versions of their software, they couldn't care less. They have always been able to figure that out and have never cared, never tried to get the crooks in any way. At the old MS Update site they did however refuse to update not legit Office components. Windows never was a problem. Or so I'm told anyway.



Thank you.
It was quite interesting. The error message was something about Ethernet bla bla not able to obtain valid IP addresses. The first thing to try was to disable Fast startup, an option in Power Settings. Wasn't even aware that option was there. And I don't notice booting up takes any longer now with it off. It's still fast. If there is a difference, it can't be more than a second. I'll time it next time. When the computer was new I think it took 8 seconds.

But this was my email account (that I was asked to create as a backup for the first). Of course their claims of increased security may well be a pretext to get my phone number (just like with FB), but at the same time they've stopped requiring a phone number for the first email account.


True, seems you can still get Win10 for free in some ways.

All of a sudden I do get to Facebook with a not logged in browser.

This is very strange. I remembered I had a second fake account. THAT I can log in with, with just email and pw. No nagging about phone number. Both addresses are coms, so that has nothing to do with it. Besides, they have better methods to decide my location.

Could it be a test run? They do it to a certain number of users from a region to estimate how many will drop out. If the number is satisfactory to them, they serve this bull to everyone.

Right. And now I was going to log in with the working account again. When I had already clicked the button I noticed a typo in my email address, too late to stop it. And I got in anyway. That's a first.

Is that even possible, if they use your email as user ID? Maybe you just thought you made a typo?

Maybe Facebook already knows the username(s) you've used from that browser (due to device fingerprinting) and accepts a near match, or maybe Facebook checks if any password/username combination in their database almost matches the submitted username. Actually I wouldn't be suprised if they did.

Or I was confused and was already logged in. But then I shouldn't have seen the login thing. No, I'm sure. There was an o instead of a p.

Oh well. At least I can read what I want now. But I don't get how companies can be so naive that they use FB as their main way of communication. More and more people realize they shouldn't use them.