Not sure if you still can make one with a made-up name and dob.

Meta knows who exists and who doesn’t in my experience.

Let us know if you succeeded.

If you decide to use Google Messages on an Android custom OS, set up Contacts Scopes (if you can) or else it it will have access to all of them around the time you first open the app.

It did that to me also. As soon as i tapped Agree, i saw that it had more permissions enabled.

If I was installing it again, I’d try turning off network access before tapping Agree but I’m not sure if this would work.

edit On GrapheneOS you can use scopes and decide which contacts it has access to.

Thanks I’ll look into it