[immibis]

Give me your social security number or you may not reply to my comments. If you don't give me your social security number, choosing instead to die on this weird hill, it's not correct to say you're banned - you're merely self-flagellating.

[GabrielTFS]

This seems like a poor argument. I don't like much either having the obligation to give GitHub my phone number, but it's not the same thing as a social security number, now is it ? Would you argue otherwise ?

[baobun]

Not US but phone number is arguably worse: You can't legally get one without tying it to govt ID anymore and tends to be tied to your current physical location.

[IIsi50MHz]

And is commonly used for authentication codes, and like Social Security Number, it is PII that should be default-deny.

Github seems to have no legit need for a user's phone number. Since there's not even a way to tell them to go pound sand, I'd say opting out of disclosing sensitive information they don't need by not signing in/up and equating their unreasonable demand with a ban is respectable.

[LadyCailin]

A phone number given to a generally reputable company is hardly equivalent to giving a rando your social security number.

I mean, obviously you disagree with them being generally reputable, but you must realize that’s not a broad opinion, and they are certainly better at preventing data breaches than the average company that stores phone numbers.

Sincerely though, I hope you get your GDPR request sorted.

[fsflover]

> generally reputable company

Are you talking about Microsoft here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Controversies

[LadyCailin]

Hence the qualifier “generally”. I’m not saying they’re above reproach, but I am saying that companies that care far less about data security already have my phone number, such as most/all of my utilities - including my phone company. And those aren’t realistically optional.

[baobun]

> but I am saying that companies that care far less about data security already have my phone number

Not mine and it sucks that this means I'm not welcome as FireFox contributor anymore unless I move countries just to register a monthly contract for a dedicated GitHub-accepted SIM card.

Once you trigger phone-number verification requirement your account is globally shadowbanned and support blocked pending SMS code verification. Aside from the privacy issue it's completely blocking people in the several countries (beyond the ones offially totally banned due to sanctions) to which GitHub won't even try to SMS/call.

Remember that registering a second account would be violating GitHub ToS.

[janbrasna]

> sucks that this means I'm not welcome as FireFox contributor anymore

Nothing has changed regarding being a contributor. Bugzilla, Phabricator, Lando. You don't really interact with GH other than read-only needs as code search. (Which, funnily, is currently the most rate-limited thing on the whole of GH ;D) — but luckily as long as there's the Hg mirror, Searchfox continues to being used for that as well.

[IIsi50MHz]

It looks like patches still get submitted to another system, and github is only used indirectly for version control.

[fsflover]

> companies that care far less about data security already have my phone number ... including my phone company.

Far less than these?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40592789

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12305598

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft#Privacy...

This is unlikely.

[Dylan16807]

The bar is a lot lower than you think.

[fsflover]

Tell me more. Meanwhile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43993076