Based on their existing screw ups, the ads process probably runs as SYSTEM and have more rights to your system than you do.

This is what bothers me about the precedent that smartphones set.

apple and apps have more access to my phone than I do. And they have unfettered network access to exfiltrate anything they want.

Windows XP did that way before smartphones came up with it.

We are unfortunately prisoner of the masses. The smart phone is a 99% device which means it caters for 99% of the users. And it's probably not a good idea letting 99% of the users anywhere near the thing based on the crap I've had to unstick over the years.

We can of course choose not to participate in this still if we don't want to.

> We can of course choose not to participate in this still if we don't want to.

The problem is that the alternatives are lacking, at least for the smartphone world. While on my PC I run a Linux distro, efforts like the PinePhone are still not good enough to be a daily driver.