This setting has been in place by default since September 2025.
Android telephones have been attaching their SIM’s cellphone quantity to each signed-in Google account on that gadget for greater than a yr. Google’s help documentation says that it verifies the quantity routinely throughout setup and provides it to each account on the cellphone, together with work and secondary accounts. In keeping with Google, verification allows options like account restoration and RCS messaging, however the firm does not clarify why the quantity must be added to each account.
Android Authority discovered that the Google documentation in query was amended someday between August and October 2025 to say that verification is on by default, whereas a Google Play providers changelog dated September 8, 2025 lists quantity verification as operating routinely on setup. Nevertheless, loads of of us are solely now discovering out, after unprompted emails from noreply-phone-verification@google.com started arriving to inform them their quantity had been verified.
What Google does with linked numbers
In keeping with Google’s support page, the hyperlink covers current and future accounts and numbers alike. In different phrases, a Google account that is added later will choose up each quantity on the cellphone, whereas switching SIM cards additionally places the brand new quantity on each account. Google and your provider additionally re-verify these numbers periodically, which might incur provider fees, and the setting can solely be managed from the cellphone itself.
It is a bit of an ungainly state of affairs, as a result of turning verification on additionally allows Higher sharing on Google for one of many signed-in account. Google says this helps video calls, messages and notifications for content material despatched to the quantity, akin to images. Cellphone quantity sign-in, discovering a misplaced gadget, emergency location providers and Fast Share additionally all rely on a verified quantity.
In October 2025, a month after computerized verification arrived, Google launched Check in with Cell Quantity, an Android restoration instrument that auto-identifies the Google accounts linked to a cellphone quantity and lets the proprietor again in with the lock display passcode from their earlier gadget. Google’s account help pages additionally describe a Higher adverts & Google providers setting that makes use of a cellphone quantity throughout Google providers to point out extra related adverts.
The identical web page says that any verified quantity on an Android gadget could be added to any Google account signed into it, although Google hasn’t stated which adverts setting applies to numbers hooked up routinely.
The way to flip off cellphone quantity verification
To cease the linking in your Android cellphone, open Settings > Google > All providers, then below Privateness & safety, choose Cellphone quantity verification and switch off Confirm cellphone numbers routinely. Some telephones will label the Google part Google providers and preferences as an alternative.
Remember the fact that turning this off does not apply retrospectively, that means numbers which have already been hooked up have to be eliminated manually. You are able to do this by navigating to Private data > Cellphone in every account’s Google settings.
Kaspersky says disabling verification additionally means dropping RCS chats in Google Messages, which pushes conversations again to SMS. Google’s Messages help pages present RCS waits on cellphone quantity verification earlier than it connects. That trade-off carries extra weight, since end-to-end encrypted RCS messaging began rolling out between Android telephones and iPhones in Could. Kaspersky provides {that a} quantity with verification turned off cannot be used for fast account restoration.
Google says it does not promote private information, together with cellphone numbers, to anybody. In Could, it additionally instructed Android Authority it was testing a coverage in choose areas that provides new Google accounts only 5GB of free storage unless a phone number is linked, down from the standard 15GB.
