@Hawlucha I've never played Minecraft, but I have MS account. It gets locked out once in a few months, mostly when using TOR. I don't think this happens when I just use VPN with exit nodes in different countries as Proton tries to keep their IPs from getting blacklisted.
It's always a bummer as I have to change my password six times to set it back to original one (AD-style security measure). I know it's me, there is no point in changing the password, right?
@Hawlucha Linking a phone number was never mandatory for me though, e-mail always did the trick, you've got to have a non-MS email-address linked though.
It offers this from time to time, but there was always a button like "Not now" or "Do it later".
The only time they insisted on entering some phone number is when I've sent too many e-mails in a short period — some antispam measure, I think.
@Hawlucha I don't think they'll collect your voice samples and your phone number if you call support as there is no way to handle this automatically — they don't know anything about the account you use, just your voice and phone number. Linking that to your account will require manual input from support engineer's side — and that is the last thing he/she wants to do I think.
But I suppose it depends on your paranoia level 😅