And that's a little scary, you sell a bit of yourself to get access to a service. It's not really the best case scenario I would want.

> One could also argue that the service is free and the service provider needs a (or yet another) way to monetize it.

True, which is why I pay Apple money. No incentive to mine my data... in fact given that privacy is a big marketing angle Apple's incentives are to make it impossible for them to access your data even if subpoenaed or presented with a warrant.