Making an account with no email and no SIM

You get the phone for ten minutes. You open the AI app, and the first screen asks for an email address. You do not have one.

Then it asks for a phone number, and the SIM in that phone is your brother’s. So you close the app and go back to whatever you were doing.

The form is the wall, not the AI

Most people who never start with AI do not stop because the AI is hard. They stop at the sign-up form. That form is the real wall.

The way past it is one free Google account. Think of it as a master key. It opens Gemini with no second sign-up. It also gives you an email address of your own.

You will need that address later. A job form asks for it. So does a scholarship form, and an exam website often does too. Making it today is useful even on the days you do not touch AI.

If you have not picked an app yet, read which app to use first before you sign up for anything.

There is one path today that asks for no form at all. In India, WhatsApp has Meta AI inside it. It needs no download, no new account and no second login, because the phone already has WhatsApp. Remember that those chats sit inside a Meta app, under Meta’s rules for your words. Use it while you get your own account ready.

In India you can do this from age 13

Here is the fact that unblocks most readers. If you are 13 or older, you are allowed to make and manage your own Google account in India. You do not need your father’s account. You do not need to be 18.

So give your real date of birth. Do not add years to look older.

A false birth year has a real cost. If the company later thinks the account belongs to a child, you get 14 days. In those days you either prove your age or put the account under a parent. If you do nothing, the account is switched off. After that you have 30 days before it is deleted, along with everything in it.

To prove your age they accept a government ID or a credit card. Most families here have the ID and not the card.

Making the account, screen by screen

Open the browser on the phone. Go to the Google account sign-up page. Its address starts with accounts.google.com.

The first screen asks for your name. The last name box is marked optional. If you use only one name, leave that box empty.

The next screen asks your date of birth and gender. So the honesty question arrives in the first minute, before you have typed anything else.

Then you choose the address itself. Pick something you can say out loud on a phone call, in a noisy office, to a clerk who will write it down.

ramkishun.verma27@gmail.com
sunita.k.2009@gmail.com

Then comes the screen that stops most people. It asks for a phone number, and the step is marked optional. Skip it and carry on.

Google sometimes asks for a number anyway. It does this when it wants to check that you are a real person. If that happens, ask the owner of the phone before you use their number.

Your father and your elder brother may have made their accounts on the same SIM already. Then you may see a line like this.

This phone number has been used too many times for verification

That is not a fault in your phone, and it is not a fault in you. It means the number has already made accounts. Google’s own answer is to use a different number, such as a friend’s, with their permission.

If you do borrow a number, do the sign-up standing next to its owner, and let them type the code into the screen themselves. Never ask anyone to read a code out to you, and never read one out to anyone. That habit is the same one that keeps your money safe, and it is worth keeping even when the request is innocent.

One thing matters more than which number you borrow. A number used once to check you are real is not the same as a recovery number. The recovery number is the way back in when you forget your password.

Do not put a relative’s number in the recovery slot. That hands them a way into your account for years, on a phone you do not control.

A SIM of your own may be closer than the family thinks. One person is allowed several mobile connections, and a house with three SIMs is nowhere near that limit. The government’s Sanchar Saathi site also lets you see how many connections are already registered in your name. Search for it and check that the web address ends in gov.in.

Now the honest cost of skipping the number. With no number and no second email address, a forgotten password is very hard to fix. Sometimes it cannot be fixed at all. So write things down on paper, in this shape.

My email address: ______________________@gmail.com
My password: ______________________
Date of birth I typed: ____ / ____ / ________
Made on: ____ / ____ / ________

Keep that paper at home, in a place only you open. Do not save the password in the notes app of a shared phone. The next person to pick up that phone can read it.

The same rule covers your Aadhaar number, your bank details and any OTP. None of them belong in an AI chat. There is a whole lesson on what you must never share.

Words you can say to your parents

If you are under 18, ChatGPT allows you from 13, but you need a parent’s permission. That is a real step, not a box to tick. The working way is to tell them plainly what you are doing.

Here are three sentences you can say. The English meaning is under each one.

Yeh padhai ka app hai. Sawaal poochhne par yeh aasan bhasha mein samjhata hai.
This is a study app. When I ask it a question, it explains in simple words.

Ismein paisa nahin lagta. Sirf school aur exam ke sawaal poochhne hain.
It costs nothing. I will only ask school and exam questions.

Aap jab chaahein, meri chat khol kar dekh sakte hain.
You can open and read my chats whenever you want.

The third sentence does most of the work. It offers openness instead of asking for privacy. In a house where one phone is shared, that is the offer people accept.

Your parents can also keep your account under their watch. Gemini still works on an account set up that way in India, and the parent decides when to switch it on. For that they need their own Google account first, so help them make one. The route built for children under 13 asks for a payment card, so it is the wrong door for you.

Using AI on a phone that is not yours

Your account travels with you. The phone does not. When you sign in on your brother’s phone, your chats sit inside his app until you remove them.

So sign out every time you finish. Look for the small round button showing your photo or the first letter of your name. Open it and choose the option to sign out.

The second thing is less obvious. Many AI apps have a memory. The app writes short notes about you and keeps them for later chats. On a shared phone the next person can open the app and read those notes. Look in the app settings for the word memory. You can switch it off, and you can delete what is already saved.

Most apps also have a temporary chat option. A chat opened that way is not saved to your history. Use it when the phone is not yours.

Some parts of the Gemini website also work without signing in at all. That is the safest way to try a question on someone else’s phone, because nothing of yours is left behind when you close the page.

Clearing the browser history is not enough on its own. Your Google account keeps its own record of what you searched and did. Open your account and look for the part named Data and privacy. Inside it you can see that record, delete it, and set it to clear itself after a fixed time. The lesson on what happens to what you type goes further into this.

One more thing, from women who share phones at home. Putting a lock on an app often causes more trouble than it prevents. A locked app invites the question “what are you hiding”. Leaving no trail is quieter than locking.

When an app decides you are a child

ChatGPT now guesses whether an account belongs to someone under 18. It looks at signals like the topics you discuss and the time of day you use it. It can quietly put a limited version on your account even when your birth date is correct.

That is not a ban. It is not a fault in your phone, and it is not a punishment. If you are under 18, that limited version is the right one for you, so keep using it.

An adult who wants the limit removed goes through an age check. It asks for a live selfie, a government ID, or both. A separate company does the checking, deletes the photo and ID within seven days, and the AI company never sees the ID itself.

Claude is different. It is for 18 and over, with no parent permission route, and it always sends a code by SMS. If you are still in school, use Gemini or ChatGPT instead.

Send one email today

Making the address is only half the job. Plenty of people own an email address and have never sent one. Sending is the part that turns it into a skill.

Do it now, to yourself. It takes two minutes.

To: your own new address
Subject: Test
Message: This is my own email address. I made it today.

Open your inbox and read it when it arrives. That single loop proves the address works before a job form depends on it.

Then use it once for a real login. DIKSHA is a free government study site. It lets you sign up with either a mobile number or an email address, so choose the email route. It sends a code to your email, and the code stays good for 30 minutes. Search for DIKSHA and check that the web address ends in gov.in before you type anything.

You now have an address, a password on paper, and an app you are allowed to use. The next step is knowing what to ask it, so go on to your first ten questions.