I recently told my bank I don't agree to their new privacy terms. I sent them all 26 pages, marked up with various red lines crossing out the objectionable clauses. One was about tracking pixels, web beacons and the like.
There was also much worse stuff contained like behavioral profiling and sharing my data with outside advertising conglomerates.
After-the-fact opt out mechanisms were described for a lot of it, but I explained very clearly that I am not consenting in the first place. The fact they provide an opt out for some of the most shameful portions reinforces that they don't need consent in the first place to provide me with banking services. I don't know who in their right mind would accept such terms. Unfortunately most individuals I know wouldn't have a clue what the jargon means or how it affects them.
A meeting was set up with my bank manager, and to underscore my point I brought in the original, aged-parchment paperwork I signed over two decades ago to open the account. That was only 5 pages long by comparison.
I also brought in a screenshot from Facebook that proved the bank uploaded some information about me to them in a Custom Audience customer list (a tool offered to advertisers that perversely deputizes them in Meta's quest to ingest all of our personal information). They have no business telling Meta or other third parties who I bank with (which is what the hashed uploaded lists are used to match & confirm).
The manager was quite understanding of my concerns and agreed none of what I objected to is legitimately needed to provide me with banking. I politely explained if they expected me to agree to this garbage I would take my personal and business deposits elsewhere.
I was pragmatic, and realize they're not going to reprogram their whole web portal just for me, but told them if they were going to go ahead and embed web beacons and the like in pages served up to me, or engage in more aggressive privacy violations, then they're doing so without my consent (an important distinction if I suffer damages down the line). In the end, my redlined version of their policy was affixed to my file to document that I do not in fact accept their terms, and they got to keep me as a customer. Not as good as a countersigned revised agreement, but enough to indicate my intent should consensus ad idem come into question.
I realize this was a lot of time and effort (and some risk of further nuisance if it failed and my accounts had to be closed), expended for something most people don't seem to care about. But the growing trend of companies outside tech adopting all our worst dark patterns really gets my gears grinding.
The story goes to show that if you choose to push back, sometimes you can win.
Good job Europe, keep blazing a trail which I hope my country eventually decides to follow.