Gmail Signup Now Demands Outbound SMS From Your Phone, Killing Anonymous Accounts

Google has quietly tightened Gmail account creation: the QR code shown during registration now instructs the user’s phone to send an outbound SMS to Google rather than receive one. The shift defeats SMS-receiving services like SMSpool that privacy-conscious users have long relied on, because the verifying message must originate from a real SIM tied to a real device.

The change closes a major loophole for pseudonymous signups but raises fresh questions about who gets excluded. Users on dumb phones cannot scan the QR at all, and travelers using short-term foreign SIMs risk having those numbers reassigned later, potentially linking accounts back to whoever next holds the line. Forum users also report the prompt is inconsistent — appearing for some sessions and not others — suggesting Google is gating it on a risk-scoring system that weighs proxy quality, device signals, and geolocation.

The broader significance is that phone-number identity is becoming a harder anchor to spoof at scale, pushing the cost of throwaway Google accounts up sharply. For users in jurisdictions with mandatory ID-linked SIM registration, it also means Gmail signup is now effectively identity-bound by default.