at least if Microsoft wants to be in compliance with EU rules on tracking

"if" doing a lot of work in that sentence. Even if the EU comes down on them for this, the fines usually end up being less than the cost of doing business. And it's not easy to prove in a court in the first place.

I think companies know and understand this, so they just end up doing it anyway and pay the inevitable fine. And that assumes that the fine comes at all - even if they pay a fine for this practice, there are probably so many others that they're not being punished for that it still makes sense for them to ignore it.

I really hope this is something that gets addressed though, as things are getting absurdly out of hand by this point.