GMail: "This phone number has been used too many times"

[ChrisGreaves]

I am trying to set up three GMail accounts, one for each of three banking accounts, and on the third setup Google objects with "This phone number has been used too many times"

The help centre records over one hundred similar complaints, threads locked, no responses etc.

Has anyone any suggestions about how to leap this hurdle?
(1) Wait 24 hours and try adding that third account again
(2) ?

It seems to me that i could as easily be a lecturer trying to set up twenty user accounts for my class (standardized names etc), so thare are legal and rational reasons for multiple GMail accounts.

Thanks in advance, Chris

[StuartR]

I suspect that the terms for these free accounts say they are for personal use. You can pay for business email.

[GeoffW]

Google lets you use one phone number for up to 4 Gmail accounts, possibly for the reason Stuart suggested, or possibly to cut down on spam account creation. There are apparently ways around it. A quick search suggests that an alternative verification method, such as another email, may be able to be used.

Another way would be to use another free email service (say Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook or ProtonMail) instead of Gmail. You can still use your Gmail client with any email address.

You can set up an alias. Something like chrisgreaves+1@gm... Or even chris.grea.ves@ - Gmail ignores periods. You can filter mail based on the alias, and you will know who sent it.

Or you could get another Sim card.

[HansV]

Moved here from Scuttlebutt (thanks, Ken!)

[ChrisGreaves]

Or you could get another Sim card.

""This phone number cannot be used for verification" :If you find this error message, you have to use a different number. To protect you from abuse, we limit the number of accounts each phone number can create."

Thanks Geoff. I made a couple of variations on email address (within GMail), even decided to register an account for My Child instead of me, thinking that my non-existent 10-year-old child might not be expected to have a phone number, to no avail.

I will now go back to the root of my problem (setting up three new emails for each of three bank accounts) and try an alternate email service.
Cheers, Chris

[DocAElstein]

Hi

I just took a quick look at my Gmail account collection. The figures I give here may be about +/- 2 in accuracy, as I was a bit careless when I first made a few accounts, but as time went on I kept a much better record:
This is my story in Germany from about the last 8 years or so
I have about 20 Gmail accounts. I have only ever had 3 telephone numbers to use to register them. I hit that limit mentioned on all of them, but it’s not evenly balanced: I was able to use one number about 10 times, another about half that. In Germany the situation seems a bit unclear as to how many times you can use a telephone number. But somewhere in the range 5-10 is what others have reported in Germany and that ties up with my experience.
( I have experienced a couple of times that a telephone number that hit the limit was then allowed later to be used once or twice again a few years later. )
In the meantime I changed the telephone number associated with all my Gmail accounts to most all be the same one. That has never been a problem, so I am guessing that the limit is only to do with the telephone number you use to register the Gmail account.

I would further guess that Gmail are not so much worried about you having lots of Gmail accounts.
I guess, as other's suggest, it’s some sort of security thing to help stop spammers/ hackers and similar bad internet people generate hundreds or thousands of Gmail accounts in a short period of time, which I guess they might be able to do if they could use a single telephone number to register with. - As far as I know it’s not easy to generate hundreds and thousands of telephone numbers, not in Germany anyway. Here to get a telephone number always involves things that include a person with proof of identity and real address, something the bad internet people would not want to do usually. So limiting how many times a telephone number can be used to register an account would appear an attractive and easy way to stop some automated mass registering of accounts.


The simple way over the problem here, is just to ask someone you know who does not have much interest in having many Gmail accounts, like your mother in law when she is visiting, ask her if you could give her phone number by registering, and then she gives you the verification number when she gets it. Once you have registered you can change the telephone number associated with the account to yours.
In Germany the restriction only seems to be on the telephone number used for a registration.
I have used the same name a few times as well, and that has never been a problem. Same name, other similar personal details.
I think it’s just the telephone number used to register that is limited in how many times you can use it.
If, as I expect, it’s a security thing, then it is likely to be inconsistent and perhaps change from time to time, and GMail would deliberately not want to give out too much accurate information about it.
Email providers have different ways to protect themselves to suit them I expect. Like Gmail limit the times I can use a phone number, but they don’t seem to mind me using a VPN. Some accounts I registered using a VPN and mostly use those accounts on the same VPN virtual location. Google then change things to suit the land of the VPN virtual location. It gives me the impression I have fooled them, ( but maybe they are trying to lull me into a sense of false security?). German Telekom on the other hand never ask for a telephone number and I have registered more accounts than I can remember with them. But try to do something associated with any account when on a VPN connection and they often get very upset. Strange

Alan



Alan

[ChrisGreaves]

... use another free email service (say Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook or ProtonMail) ...

Hi Geoff. I looked at ProtonMail as I'd not heard of it before, but it had too many hurdles to be leaped before the account was valid, so I went with Yahoo.
Then I hooked all three bank email accounts to Thunderbird so they will be filed separately from my named email account ("$10 has been deposited...")

I shuffle money once at the start of each month; the pension comes in three days before the end of the month, so I sit in a grubby dressing-gown, cackling, and eagerly re-counting my new-found wealth, then do the eTransfer to shunt money into various accounts, pay bills, and spend the rest of the month outside playing with composting!
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

... just to ask someone .. like your mother in law ...

Hi Alan. Both my ex-mothers-in-law are dead, and I still I don't trust them. Nor their daughters.

Besides which, using some other human channel as a mechanism for online banking security seems to defeat the purpose of online banking security.

I understand GMail's desire to thwart spammers, but Google mail falls down in not providing a way for a legitimate user to create more than three email addresses. Honestly. Google. They have enough computing resources to monitor my new email accounts for suspicious banking activity, right?
Cheers, Chris

[DocAElstein]

You only have to use someone elses number to register the new gmail account. Straight away after the sucessful new account registration you can go into the settings of the new account and change the telephone number associated with the new account to any other one, even the one which was not allowed to be used for the registration, and then the number you used to register no longer has anything to do with the new gmail account and can't be used to access it. At least that is my experiience. 20 of my gmail accounts are associated with my main telephone number, and that telephone number has long since not been allowed to register a new gmail account, ( after registering about 10 accounts, spread over a few years )
_.___________

Both my ex-mothers-in-law are dead, and I still I don't trust them. Nor their daughters.

I know the feeling.