If you give google a phone number, it may send account security codes there for changing passwords and stuff. If you no longer use that phone number, it may be re-used so whoever gets that number may receive google text messages regarding your account.
Skuzzy, I read an article outlining what google does with gmail. Apparently somewhere in the license or in terms of use or whatever, it is clear that it scans all email and adds/associates everything in every email you send and receive within the google associational database. It's mostly for ad research and targeting but as you found out, the data they're skimming from your emails and storing is used to build a very complete picture of you and your email correspondents.
The main lesson though is that they scan, store, and associate everything from every email. At some point you will probably be able to type the email without specifying the recipient and it will be able to accurately recommend recipients based on the email content.
I use earthlink because they bought out mindspring who bought out micron.net who bought out... you get the picture. I pay about $5/month so I can keep the same email address and webspace I've had for nearly 18 years. I have their basic email package which is about 6 email addresses, webmail access, some web and ftp space, and a couple of other features I don't use much. I also have a yahoo and a gmail account for when I don't want to give out my primary email address, but the yahoo account keeps being used by retards signing up for game or porn accounts so I do have to occasionally use it to un-subscribe to whatever service those idiots have used my email account for.
