Re: Let's report every case of this to the ICO
For Firefox, there's a plugin (or was, I'm using version 56 still) of 'cookie white list with buttons' or similar title. In short, you can tell it to accept ALL cookies, as long as the button enables cookies. But only whitelisted cookies are stored on the hard drive. The rest go into 'write only memory' when you disable cookies or close the browser. Dumping all cookies is basically "turn it off, turn it back on again" [except for whilte-listed cookies, of course]. So it doesn't SOLVE the problem, but it sure keeps it under control.
In fact, if this were a standard browser feature (HINT HINT) to ONLY store non-white-list cookies IN MEMORY, and give users the ability to "dump all" or shut off their acceptance with a button or a menu option, it might actually solve 99% of the cookie tracking problems. In many cases you'd get those irritating "someone logged on to your account" e-mails but so what. The entire point is to eliminate the tracking, and flushing cookies periodically (yes, obvious reference to "the loo") would really screw them up. And what would happen if EVERYODY did it? they'd have to do something ELSE.
and 'tick boxes' on a permissions page would no longer matter. And, maybe the browser/plugin could prompt you with "do you want to store this cookie permanently" (with the options to block it [black list] or keep it in memory until you flush/exit [normal handling]) so you can see what they're up to and have some additional choice.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
