Can confirm.

Google locked me out of my account for not giving them my phone number. Even though I used the correct password. Even though I verified myself through the recovery email, which has been the same for ages. Even though I wasn't using a VPN or connecting from a public network. Even though there was no reason to think my account or credentials were compromised.

They are, in fact, extorting phone numbers from people.

Thankfully, I don't depend on my google account for anything, but I'm still stuck receiving spam forwarded by gmail, because I can't log in to turn off forwarding. (I'll probably have to filter it out at some point.) I honestly hope they just delete my account after some months without a phone number.

You could lose access to your X years of Gmail history with 2FA enabled if you lose your phone.

Google can close your email account down at any time for any stupid reason they like and their nonexistant support will leave you standing in the rain without access to years of mails. Switch to a paid mailer with actual support ASAP

Creating a new Google account isn't even possible without a phone number anymore. I had a new account which I didn't use in a while and it decided I need some old phone number to confirm my log in. There's no way to log in, recover or delete the account. There's no way I'm putting my daily account to that risk by giving them whatever phone number I have now

Dumb take. All it's warning you is that without those, you won't have a way to recover your account it you lose your password or if it's hacked and someone changes it.

BuT cOrPoRaTiOnS tRaCk YoUr LoCaTiOn If yOu GiVe ThEm YouR nUmBeR

Like they'd need your phone number to do that when you probably already have a smartphone with Facebook installed

Ransomware is getting smarter by the day!

No it doesn't. It means that your email is encrypted and they don't have a way to unlock it. If you don't add recovery info or print out your unlock codes, you will lose access. Just like it says.

2FA is more secure.