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vz

In that location are a myriad of things to do when you offset start up your shiny new Android phone. You have to add your accounts, set upwards security features, and become rid of all that bloatware. At some point in the future, Verizon customers might find that bloatware sneaks back onto the device, and information technology could bring its friends. The carrier has reportedly been shopping a program to advertisers that would include pushing bloatware apps to phones it has already sold.

Verizon activates millions of Android-powered phones and tablets every quarter, so the opportunity for the carrier to make some actress cash is substantial. The idea was pitched to retailers and finance companies starting late final year. Co-ordinate to a report from Advertising Historic period, Verizon was shopping effectually a rate of $ane-two per device. That's tens of millions in new revenue every twelvemonth for very little work on the carrier'south end. It would, still, have to deal with an almost inevitable PR nightmare. The instant the get-go sponsored app shows up on a phone, people volition rightly be up in arms.

Bloatware on a new phone is nothing new — it has been an ongoing issue ever since the showtime Android phones landed on carriers. Verizon has been an especially heavy abuser of application pre-loading past including its ain duplicative services like Messaging+, Go90 video streaming, Slacker Radio, and VZ Navigator. In years past, you'd have to stare at bloatware in your app drawer forever because they were on the system partition, simply in Android 4.0 Google added the ability to disable system apps that can't be uninstalled. The answer, obviously, is for Verizon to just button more bloat to the phone, right?

section-two.0This isn't the offset time carriers accept toyed with the idea of pushing sponsored content to phones after selling them. A few years ago both Verizon and T-Mobile were in hot water for pre-loading a service called DT Ignite that could be used to install such apps remotely in the background. T-Mobile eventually backed off, simply Verizon has all the same been including the service on phones. In fact, the Verizon Milky way S7 recently had DT Ignite added in a system update. Could this be part of the carrier's advertising program?

Apps delivered in this way should exist uninstallable, merely it would withal be quite an annoyance; like pulling weeds. Every bit soon as you lot get rid of the junk, another app could show up. When you consider many of these phones toll y'all hundreds of dollars (plus what you're paying for service), the idea that Verizon would start pushing boosted junk software on y'all to make a few actress bucks is ludicrous.

Verizon has yet to respond to requests for comment. Hopefully cooler heads prevailed and the carrier opted not to pursue this program. Even so, information technology looks like the tools are in place to start pushing sponsored apps to you at any fourth dimension.