Yes, that happens. Some countries require KYC when you buy the SIM card. Others, will let you buy the SIM card without KYC, but you won’t be able to us use/activate it, until you provide KYC. It’s frustrating.
If you use an account with a private browser like Mullvad and a VPN, the accounts get banned really fast. Mine one lasted a day and the other a week. The only way to get your account back is through support. You can create it anonymously, but you can’t really use it anonymously.
Depending on which account, I might not need to have perfect anonymity.
For example if I do create a 2nd Google account for streaming, I per-se don’t need to use it while be anonymous and…streaming on YouTube Live. 
Yet I still need to not have it public for everybody.
That’s at least my use case. 
I created my account in Mullvad. Are you saying that you were in a similar boat than me? Meaning you successfully created an anonymous account, but it got suspended within a week?
You can’t really get support if you have a free account. I’ve used Google Support before, but only for my personal Google account that is linked to my real identity. And that account is a paid account which comes with phone support.
If there is another bit of advice I would give, is that once your account is created log in in a browser where you will always be connected. So that when you launch your browser, you are already logged in. That way you can create some activity via YouTube for example.
That being said, I still think it’s important to log into your account in other browsers multiple times so that it is used to connecting from different locations and browsers. Maybe you can wait a week or a month after you stayed connected in a different browser.
I mean, I used the same IP and the same browser, I didn’t clear the cookies, but about a day later I get a message saying I’m blocked for suspicious activity, that they can’t help me, and to contact support. On my other account, I only logged in once to grab the Gemini API key, but I still got banned a week later. I’m not sure if the issue is with Mullvad’s fingerprinting protection or because they detected the VPN IP.
Maybe signing up and/or logging on Brave in private mode will make a difference. I might try that for my next attempts.
Don’t do this anymore. Sometimes Google trigger verification which requires the number you used when creating account and you can possibly lock yourself out. Afaik.
I also heard if someone gets hand on that number they can login on your account but don’t quote me on that.
here are other suggestions with add’t annotations on the file …
AND https://www.1001sms.com is also good for Canadians, it worked for my similar Micrososoft issue.
and this site has worked in the past as well … https://juicysms.com
also, by registering with an alias, the temp. phone number is deleted once changes are completed.
but both require payment which may prove substantial for some
Are you saying you can set both a Google and an Apple ID to do 2FA with an authenticator app? If so, I could see your idea working with a temporary SIM. I would hate having to pay continuously for a prepaid SIM just for a Google and Apple ID.
For Google, yes absolutely. For Apple, it’s not possible, unfortunately.
Apple only supports 2FA via phone number and other Apple devices. They don’t support 2FA via authenticator app or YubiKey which absolutely sucks. And just to be clear, I don’t think you can create an Apple ID without giving your phone number for security.
Yes, that’s why you want to enable every account verification feature that is not privacy invasive the moment you create your account. That means:
- Enabling 2FA via authenticator app
- Saving your security codes
- Enabling 2FA via YubiKey (if you want)
- Enabling 2FA via Passkey (if you want and can)
- Providing a 2nd email address for verification (Use an address not linked to your identity)
However, despite all that, when you create an anonymous Google account, you may still be asked to verify your phone number. That’s why I recommend that you keep access to whatever number you are using for at least a month. And during that time log in multiple times in your anonymous Google account.
I recommend having 2 browsers.
One browser (Brave) where you are already permanently logged in, so that you don’t have to log in again. From this browser, you can watch YouTube videos to create some history.
And a second browser (Mullvad or any browser in incognito mode) where your log in is not saved so that you have to log in every time you open it. With this browser, you deliberately log in multiple times a week, with your VPN, from various locations, so that Google learns to deem your account trustworthy.
After asking to verify your number a few times, they should eventually stop and only ask for your 2FA tokens.
To share my latest experience with Google: they want you to SEND AN SMS from a phone instead of sending you a code. This makes many of the SMS services obsolete as these only receive SMS.
Yes, what I had too (as explained few messages above).
Yeah, I can confirm this too. First time I’ve seen a service asking me to send a verification code instead of receiving it!
curious if this is an a/b test. i recently got locked out of a 15 year old account. i never signed up with a phone number. i always had the app. well, i added security keys and an authenticator app, verified it worked on multiple browsers for a few days then deleted the app. a few days ago i couldn’t sign in with my security methods. i didn’t get an option for backup codes, authenticator, or security keys. it only gave the option for a phone number. any number (virtual numbers didn’t work). not sure how that is secure. i can only hope they were going to ask for other security methods after the phone verification.
i say this to warn others to be careful how/when you change your security settings with Google accounts. 15 years of data is now gone, well 3 years since my last backup. So backup every 6 months or year for Google accounts and do not backup with another Google account use a different service. which may be obvious for most people but sometimes you forget.
You might want to check out WantSMS, they have EU and other countries sim based temporary numbers available.