Apparently, from their perspective, it's OK to cross that line:

* It's not your notification area; it's theirs -- they control what shows up on it.

* It's not your operating system; it's theirs -- they control what it does.

* It's your not phone; it's theirs -- they control what you can do with it.

It could get worse. I imagine it's only a matter of time before we start getting ads inserted within our personal messages (e.g., "click here to read the rest of your mom's email"), or asked to click through ads to change phone settings like display brightness, or even forced to see ads before we can use the phone to make non-emergency phone calls. Their imagination is the limit!

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Edits: added e.g. in parenthesis to clarify what I meant.