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

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

Post by 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
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StuartR
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Re: GMail: "This phone number has been used too many times"

Post by StuartR »

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


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

Post by 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.

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

Post by HansV »

Moved here from Scuttlebutt (thanks, Ken!)
Best wishes,
Hans

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

Post by ChrisGreaves »

GeoffW wrote:
24 May 2023, 15:23
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
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DocAElstein
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GMail: "phone used too many times?" - borrow your mother in Laws phone when she visits

Post by 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
I seriously don’t ever try to annoy. Maybe I am just the kid that missed being told about the King’s new magic suit, :(

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

Post by ChrisGreaves »

GeoffW wrote:
24 May 2023, 15:23
... 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
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ChrisGreaves
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Re: GMail: "phone used too many times?" - borrow your mother in Laws phone when she visits

Post by ChrisGreaves »

DocAElstein wrote:
28 May 2023, 18:25
... 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. :grin:

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
The brain is a three-pound mass you can hold in your hand that can conceive of a universe a hundred billion light-years across (Marian C. Diamond)

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

Post by 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 )
_.___________
ChrisGreaves wrote:
29 May 2023, 13:21
Both my ex-mothers-in-law are dead, and I still I don't trust them. Nor their daughters. :grin:
:smile: :laugh: :smile: I know the feeling.
I seriously don’t ever try to annoy. Maybe I am just the kid that missed being told about the King’s new magic suit, :(

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

Post by Mico »

I know that the OP probably doesn't need it, but this might be useful for others.
You can use AnonymSMS, a free service that provides phone numbers for SMS verification purposes. I've used it myself a few times when I needed to set up additional accounts without wanting to use my personal phone number again.

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

Post by DocAElstein »

I have tried those sort of numbers many times over the last couple of years. I never had any success.
I always hit the same problem, the one in the OP, and Thread Title, which is that the number can’t be used for gmail account registering – the message says that the number has been used too many times. I just tried that site. Same problem again.
Too many times used for gmail.JPG
Gmail deliberately don’t tell you how often a phone number may be used when registering a google Gmail account. My experience and that I have heard of others suggests its variable but somewhere near about 10 times on average. ( I also found that a number of mine that hits the limit is then allowed later to be used just one more time, about once a year on avarage so far.

I expect that possibly, once such a site adds a new number, then its limit for mail account registering at Gmail is very quickly used up. You woulld probably need insider infomation , or some other way to know exactly when such a site adds a new number.

Alan


Edit P.S. Sometimes in the past at other places when I helped someone get a VBA CDO sending coding to work, I asked them to make a gmail account and to and pass me the log- in details, ( Privately ), and I got the coding working for them with that.
In gratitude they gave me the gmail account later and then made another, or used their existing gmail account in the coding. So that is another unconventional way to get another gmail account.
So far, I have found that once you have an account, you can go into the settings and change any phone numbers. I have not hit the limit yet on that, at about 20. I will take a guess that may also be limited
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I seriously don’t ever try to annoy. Maybe I am just the kid that missed being told about the King’s new magic suit, :(