In article ,
"Ralph Mowery" writes:

"rickman" wrote in message
...
A big issue I have with Yahoo is that they now require you to verify a
new account with a mobile cell number. That's ridiculous.

I have not seen any places that required a phone number. If it did, I would
not give mine out except a bank or similar place.

Yes, it happens. My ISP, U.S. cable provider Charter Communications,
is changing to something called Charter Spectrum and is now requiring
reentry of all personal information, disclosure of one's cell number,
and acquiescence to a their latest and greatest terms and conditions.

You know, all the ordinary stuff: they get rights to your first born
child; if anything goes wrong it's your fault and you compensate them;
they have no liability for anything beyond one month's charges; and
you can't sue or participate in class action lawsuits against them.

OK, no first born child clause. But the rest is roughly correct.
And, yes, you do have arbitration and small claims court, but with the
ridiculously low liability limit these are hardly worth the effort.

Not to mention that there's a secrecy clause regarding results of
arbitration, and a no jury, ever, ever, clause should your case
despite all odds make its way into a real courtroom.

Oh, and if it looked as if you were not going to do the sign up
by the end of the month, they started hijacking certain web pages:
instead of just getting to your page you got a dire warning about
Charter's deadline as the top 50+ percent of the screen, followed,
almost as an afterthought, by the target page at the bottom.

[OK, enough. We all know large scale government sanctioned monopolies suck]

I have seen several places that would like a phone number for verification,
but not required.

This one was required. I did experiment a bit and it looked as if it
might take my land line number, possibly due to it having been a cell
number to begin with anyway.

George