Aside from the accessibility issues pointed out by another comment, this was mostly an annoyance upon our users that the higher-ups decided converted well. FWIW we did try to argue against it but profits dictate behavior in a large corporation. :-/

Either way, it doesn't exist any more and if you were ever bothered by it (I apologize), there are no over-arching effects that you have to worry about.

From my perspective, at least you could stop going to the website if they did stuff like this, and TBH anyone's free to do whatever they want on their website. A lot of these other stories are doing things without informing customers, or using customer data illegally, and stuff like that.

It's sure not great if you want people to come back to your site, but it's not morally bankrupt.