In a previous post, I wrote about storing new photos in a new Google account. This is a risk reduction plan to prevent Google Photos from disabling my main email address, which is used for nearly everything. New pictures and email are now in 2 different accounts. The existing files/pictures remain where they are.
Everything was fine until my photo account was disabled for violating the Terms of Service. Google thinks that it was an account created by a bot. An appeal quickly sorted that out. A small voice tells me I shouldn’t have used a common phone number for both photos and the mail account.
My intuition was proven right. A 9to5 Google article, states the following from a user’s screenshot.
Your account includes 5 GB of storage. Now get even more storage space with your phone number for Google Photos, Drive, and Gmail.
- Unlock 15 GB storage at no cost by using your phone number
- Keep 5 GB storage
Google will use your phone number to make sure storage is added only once per person.
Understand Google Account storage management policy at g.co/help/storagepolicy
Bold text emphasis is by me. After seeing this, I added a different phone number for Photos account.