Creating an email account without a phone or an alternate email address?
November 12, 2015 4:55 PM Subscribe
I'm a librarian, trying to help a patron sign up for an email account. He has never used email before, but needs an email address to apply to work at the local chain grocery store (which is just stupid, but that's what they require, so...). So I'm trying to walk him through signing up for Gmail, or Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail, and they all require that he either have a cell phone or an alternate email address. He has neither.
His landline phone does not have voice mail. He doesn't have any friends who have computers who can help him. Since he's a library patron, so pretty much a complete stranger, I am unwilling to let him use my cell number or email address -- especially since whatever email provider he uses would keep that information on file. I've been searching around trying to find a simple-to-use, web-based email service that would let him sign up without the phone or email verification, but no luck. There has to be a way! But it has to be a way that is super-easy for non-computer-savvy people to use. And it has to be web-based, and not something that they'd need to download, since they'd be using the library's computers.
(This particular patron is planning to get a cheap cell phone soon anyway, and is going to come back later so I can help him get set up with an email account, but this has come up before, and I hate hitting a brick wall when I'm trying to help someone.)
His landline phone does not have voice mail. He doesn't have any friends who have computers who can help him. Since he's a library patron, so pretty much a complete stranger, I am unwilling to let him use my cell number or email address -- especially since whatever email provider he uses would keep that information on file. I've been searching around trying to find a simple-to-use, web-based email service that would let him sign up without the phone or email verification, but no luck. There has to be a way! But it has to be a way that is super-easy for non-computer-savvy people to use. And it has to be web-based, and not something that they'd need to download, since they'd be using the library's computers.
(This particular patron is planning to get a cheap cell phone soon anyway, and is going to come back later so I can help him get set up with an email account, but this has come up before, and I hate hitting a brick wall when I'm trying to help someone.)
This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's request -- restless_nomad
Response by poster: Oh crud, never mind, I just found the answer. (Mail.com, for future reference.)
posted by sarcasticah at 5:06 PM on November 12, 2015
posted by sarcasticah at 5:06 PM on November 12, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
I just created an gmail account with no phone number and no prior email address.
I was surprised for 5 seconds that they required that I specify gender and age, though.
posted by the Real Dan at 5:05 PM on November 12, 2015