T-Mobile Pushing Marketing Messages to Notification Bars on Android Devices

 

T-Mobile’s newest marketing ploy is to send advertisements of new features and contests masked as notifications to Android devices in their system. T-Mobile sent this little tweak with the latest “My Account App” update that T-Mobile Android devices received recently and the problem is in plain view as you can see from the image above.

Supporters have taken to forums to vent their anger that T-Mobile did not even offer a way to ‘opt out’ of the carrier making itself even more popular on users very own notification bars. The notification system is meant for important notices such as ‘missed calls’, ‘smses’, ‘emails’ or other things the user themselves deem important enough to qualify for notification alerts.

The reason users do not get as angry about ads on free apps is because they know that the developers need ads to help float their business for more apps to come and if users want to get rid of the ads, they can just purchase a premium version. But in this case, T-Mobile has given its users no such option. If marketing on individual’s notification bars becomes the next most used form of marketing, it might just spell the end for Android devices. Have you received the update and seen the advertisements in your notification bar? Are you for or against the idea?

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, T-Mobile