This phone number has already been used too many times for verification

Question

tl;dr: When trying to login to a new Google account I'm getting a "This phone number has already been used too many times for verification" error, but I don't have another phone number. Is there anything else that I can do?

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A few minutes after creating a secondary Google account, and successfully accessing Gmail, I was automatically logged off.

When I tried to log back in, I was presented with multiple verication steps. After completing them I received the following message:

We’ve detected unusual activity on the account you’re trying to access. To continue, please follow the instructions below.

I don't know what the "unusual activity" could be, because all I did was to create the account and then access Gmail.

The "instructions below" offers a single option, to provide a phone number for verification by either a voice call or text message.

When I try to enter my phone number, I receive the following error:

This phone number has already been used too many times for verification

1. I have not used that phone number with the new account.
2. I have used it to verify a single other account
3. I do not have another phone number.

Is there any way to avoid finding an additional phone number to "borrow" to successfully login?

Answer 1

The only thing you can do other than getting a phone number to use is try to contact Google, but the probability that you will get a response to overcome this limitation is close to zero.

Below is based on my experience as a Google Product Expert. I have not actively participated since several years ago, but I still receive some emails.

You could try using the Google Accounts Community. If your case is found interesting based on the goals that the Community might have, your case might be "accepted". If your post doesn't match one of Community's current goals and it doesn't look like something extraordinary, you might get a canned response, which could be a kindly wording pointing you to a help article.

If your post is found interesting, it might be possible that one of the Google Products Experts will escalate your post to a Google employee, who might escalate the case to a Google engineer. What happens next will depend on the case circumstances.

The top result of my search attempt was: This phone number has already been used too many times for verification bug. It is dated Apr 6, 2023. It has no answer and it's locked. Inactive threads are automatically locked after a few days to avoid infinity chains of "me too" and non-constructive replies.

Answer 2

Try using an Android phone that supports multiple users. Go to the system settings, and enable the feature to have multiple users. Add a user. You will be prompted to create a Google account. You will be prompted for a phone number, but you may be allowed to skip that step.

It seems that Google is more forgiving when someone attempts to create an account during the set-up phase of an Android phone.