Comment by mrob

>my browser does that every time I visit a site

The purpose of a browser is to make network requests. If I use a browser, I am implicitly giving it consent to make the network requests necessary for the web browsing I do.

This implied consent does not cover unnecessary requests, e.g. the adverts Firefox displays on new tabs by default are unacceptable, because I did not consent to them being downloaded. It also does not cover the network requests made by opening the "Extensions and Themes" menu, because merely looking at a configuration menu does not imply consent to make network requests.

But that fact that modern web browsers are a privacy disaster does not excuse bad behavior from other software.