I understand the frustration and would probably have said similar till recently. I'm now starting to think these companies can't be trusted to keep pushing thin

I understand the frustration and would probably have said similar till recently. I'm now starting to think these companies can't be trusted to keep pushing things beyond the spirit of the law and that we should simply outlaw certain forms of data collection so that even asking for consent isn't required. I have no problem with a Web site owner monitoring my progress around their site, timing my interactions, recording what things I was interested in, and then using that data to "optimize" my experience. But do I think having Facebook track me around hundreds of non-Facebook sites is OK? Or an ad network doing the same? Not really. I would be quite happy if they fully legalised first party data collection and outlawed third party collection entirely (including proxying first party data to a third party automatically - to close that loophole), to be honest, and then we wouldn't need consent buttons or banners, perhaps.