I can imagine that the tactic used on me works - same as making the hide/close/disagree button small. Dark Patterns in real life.

Agreed. It used be worse here - at some point merchants wanted your social security number to create a unique customer identifier.

I will not describe how angry I felt hearing a shoe store clerk ask for my social security number (again, did not lash out at the clerk), but I was angry.

That thankfully did not last long (iirc).