Yahoo groups

I've found Yahoo Groups very useful over the years. Probably greatly aided by using ad-blocking software in my browser!

But I'm told that these days to sign up for a yahoo group, one needs to provide a zip code, birth date, and needs to get a yahoo email address.
Can anybody confirm this?
(And can it be fake ones? Surely they can't check?)
(It seems one can add other email addresses to use, later, but it still seems a bit silly that one has to get a yahoo one (although I'm sure it boosts their prestige to advertisers).

Some people hate all this, but considering what I hear from professionals of the difficulties of running mailing lists with tens of thousands of addresses, and the spectacular cost of professional services (Lyris which I'd been using, just boosted their *minimum* fee to $1250 per month!), there must be some downside to the highly flexible and free service Yahoo provides. I've been a member of several groups for many years, and find them very useful and even comparatively user-friendly, and with an ad-blocker in place, I'm not bothered. (I had actually expected ads to appear in the emails themselves, but I don't seem to get that. I think that shows restraint.)