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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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The "majors" - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc - have gotten much harder to reliably make an email account on without a real phone number or other email. You can avoid this by going with second-tier providers, like Protonmail, Fastmail, etc. You may have to pay a small amount for it, but it's probably worth it. Not sure about phones - you can get a cheap temporary phone number with various apps, but IME they're usually filtered for all of the usual services that use phone number verification, and it might be necessary to buy an additional actual real phone to do it. Probably better to avoid if you can. You can handle payments by buying prepaid credit cards, with cash if you're particularly paranoid.