World’s most popular free email providers, Google (Gmail) and Yahoo, have made telephone numbers mandatory for creation of new email addresses in a bid to check spam, a global telecoms industry monitoring firm, Pyramid Research, said Monday.
“Any person wishing to create a new email ID needs to provide a telephone number which Gmail and Yahoo use for verification,” said a report on Pyramid Research’s daily update.
According to Gmail website, the move to seek phone number is to check spam email senders.
“In an effort to protect our users from abuse, we sometimes ask users to prove they’re not a robot before they’re able to create or sign in to accounts. Having this additional confirmation via phone is an effective way to keep spammers from abusing our systems,” the website said.
Google has also limited number of accounts that a person using one telephone number can create but the website did not specify the maximum number of email accounts it will allow.
While for Gmail a person can give either telephone or mobile number, for a new Yahoo email account it is now mandatory to have a mobile number.
“At Yahoo, we are committed to the security of our users. We ask our users to provide their mobile number at registration as a secondary means of authentication, in addition to their password. We would only use the number if we see any unusual activity on the account,” a Yahoo spokesperson said.
Internet companies have been advocating at global level that there should be no kind of restriction on use of internet and if there are any regulations on internet, then the cost associated with compliance of those regulations should be such that it should not check proliferation of internet usage.
