Old Email Accounts No Longer Useable Without Private Phone Number?

My GMX “login or password” is no longer valid? After looking into it they now require a phone number.

Looking into other providers that ‘claimed’ that this isn’t required are now requiring it, apparently very recently.

The ones I checked so far now requiring:

-Mail.com.
-GMX.
-Gmail (for me on my device, I remembered a skip option being available).

accounts email far gmail isn login mail old password phone phone number privacy private valid