Surely they are going to be loading it using Carrier Configuration tied to the sim card... As soon as you put a verizon sim card into your unlocked non verizon phone it installed a bunch of helper apps.
If Verizon did all this stuff on an opt-in basis, I'd have no problem with it. If it were opt-out, I'd be grumpy, but would probably deal with it. When it's required, I'm going to be looking for alternatives.