I'm in Canada. Amazingly, a lot of these sites that require a phone number don't actually require one. If it's a person grabbing my details, I tell them i don't have a phone, and they usually figure out what to do. If it's a computer that won't accept "no" for an answer, I pick 1234567 as my number after the area code.
This has not really impacted my life in any significant way.
Interesting! I have a burner number that i use for sites I don't really trust (usually because they insist on texting to confirm it's real). I wonder if Canadian banks are more accommodating in this regard, because having a phone number seems pretty important for a lot of US institutions (utilities, finance, etc.).
I was first thinking about "how do you keep in touch with people then?" but obviously there's a lot of other channels you can use. The only thing that would bother me is how you would contact the emergency services? Do you send them an e-mail? Or do you have some other radio equipment like a walkie-talkie?
I don't know, I haven't had an emergency yet. I live in an urban area, so if I did have an emergency, there would be no shortage of phones around me that I could use. If I were to go out to the wilderness, I might bring a flare or something, but I'm not a big outdoorsman.
