You wouldn’t concern yourself with the legality, if your threat vector includes the traceability of the phone number.

And regarding your (in this context) nonsensical privilege remark: I live in such a country. Yet I have used such numbers.

If somebody is that paranoid (or in a situation where that level of secrecy is necessary) they would not use a number that is traceable to them… So it doesn’t matter if they have your phone number or not.

Last I heard the person in question stepped down. Made me consider to switch to Pixel with grapheneos

Someone has a recommendation about how to handle these services?

You don’t. Apple is notorious for their walled garden approach. Microsoft has no interest in supporting Linux (why should they?). Don’t know about Google.

I am pretty happy with pcloud. They offer lifetime licenses that are really worth it if you intend to stick with them long term. The automatic Backup works great and AFAIK they have clients for all major platform’s. The android client could be better, but Windows and Linux works great. Don’t miss any functionality and the connection (at least here in Germany) is fast.

Hardware great, software garbage. They really want to be like Apple but aren’t even half as competent (which is more an insult to Samsung than praise to Apple). It comes bloated with all kind of garbage alot of which you can’t uninstall (like Facebook). They have their own app store next to the Google Store which is annoying. It has no reason to be there other than distributing their shitty apps that I don’t want in the first place.

I currently have an S21 and can’t wait to have the spare income to replace it.