This is a bit of a peeve.

I have a GMail account. I use GMail all the time. It works very well.I generally use ThunderBird to read mail.

From time to time I log on to the GMail web site and check for things like spam. Once the broadcast from Secrecy News (at www.fas.org) got marked as spam. Once a friend’s email, in which he quoted an amazingly illiterate but historically correct letter, was marked as spam, presumably because of the atrocious grammar and spelling.

So I check, maybe once a week, places like GMail and yahoo, to verify that stuff isn’t being marked as spam when it should be, and conversely.

Gmail now asks me for a cell phone number. I don’t give it one. It insists.

This is a bit of a peeve.

There should be an option to “don’t ask this again” and to “add other contact information” on the main GMail page. But don’t force me into a dialogue where I must say, no, no, twice, that I don’t intend to give them a cell phone number.

Anyone else been annoyed by this? It’s a very small blemish on a terrific service.