> In no other domain is implicit, cross-arena tracking by default acceptable.

Maybe you don't think it should be acceptable, but it's the norm everywhere. Computers aren't an exception.

Your purchases are tracked by credit card companies. Your license plate is tracked by road cameras. Your financial history is tracked by credit bureaus. Your phone calls are tracked by your telephony provider.

And you haven't opted into any of them.

In fact, except for the annoying cookie pop-ups on websites, I've never encountered opt-in tracking anywhere in my life. Everything is tracking-by-default, and you're lucky if you get an option to opt out anywhere.

I think we're talking about a different kind of tracking. It's one thing if the data is collected for the purpose of billing (the telco needs to know who I called so they can charge me the correct price) or for exceptional circumstances (law enforcement, debugging logs for engineering, etc). It's another thing if this data is explicitly used against you to manipulate you better and waste your time with ads.

Most of the tracking you mentioned is done for purely functional purposes (the product/service can't work without knowing who you are, etc) where as the majority of online tracking is purely there for wasting people's time with ads.

Giving examples of a bad pattern doesn't make the pattern less bad. This should have never been the default behavior.

curiousllama said that implicit tracking was not allowed in any domain other than software. Don't move the goalposts.

In the US, at least, your license plate can get scanned by cameras driving around and you show up on security cameras (with improving facial recognition).

What's a domain analogous to computers without tracking? I suppose all those are "by computers" at the end of the day, but I can't think of anything I do that isn't tracked somehow.

that's scary to hear. where I live there was a very short lived experiment with facial recognition at a train station and when it ended it showed that the general public was not in favour of it.