Long story short: bought a couple of Chromebooks over the years (as they're nice multi user machines), created Google accounts on each but never gave a phone number. Now after years of use, Google pops up an "unrecognized device" roadblock AFTER I enter the password to log in, with the message "enter a phone number to get a text message with a verification code".
There is no mention of suspicious activity. The only trigger I can think of is a recent modem reset that changed my Public IP, and my new IP doesn't appear to resolve to my old physical location in Google's geoip db.
Am I crazy or does this seem like an extremely cynical attempt to get more phone numbers? I don't even understand how giving them my phone number proves anything as I definitely did not ever give them one previously.
Unfortunately burner phones are not available in my country, so that's not an option.