For people who are privacy conscience I often see them getting a false sense of progress. They remove the visible part, but then they never check the system underneath. And then they can't understand ...
The short version is simple:
Removing a phone number from one profile does not prove it's gone. If the same number still lives inside your primary email, your cloud account, your carrier history, your backups, or your recovery settings, then the connection can still be rebuilt.
That is why this stuff sometimes feels so whack-a-mole.
You change one thing. It looks fixed. Then it comes back. Not because you missed a button or some magic setting but because you were dealing with a system.
Removing a phone number from one profile does not prove it's gone. If the same number still lives inside your primary email, your cloud account, your carrier history, your backups, or your recovery settings, then the connection can still be rebuilt.
That is why this stuff sometimes feels so whack-a-mole.
You change one thing. It looks fixed. Then it comes back. Not because you missed a button or some magic setting but because you were dealing with a system.
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