Adding a Phone Number

Question

I want to add my phone number to the security portion of my account. The instructions provided in the help prompts indicate that it is possible, but as I follow the instructions, the 'add a phone' feature button is not present.

Answer 1

For personal Microsoft accounts, Microsoft now says you can no longer add a phone number as a new security method. Their current support article states: “For increased security, you can no longer add a phone number” when adding a new way to verify sign-in.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/microsoft-account-security-info-verification-codes-bf2505ca-cae5-c5b4-77d1-69d3343a5452

That said, Microsoft still supports receiving security codes by text in general for accounts that already have phone verification set up, and their support pages still describe SMS verification and genuine Microsoft verification texts.