Legislation will always lag behind reality here but if there was political will, you could still have privacy protected. It is not about regulating technicalities and more about legislating the ownership of data and how and if that ownership can be transferred. This would and should also impact trade with data and its market value that is hard to understand for most people.

I fully agree. My theory is that "cookie" is just a term that people memorize. Other tracking methods dont have such fancy terms. It is OK for professionals, but for decision makers that are no experts in that field, it is hindering.