The only reason ad networks were behind DNT in the first place was because they thought no one would use it and it would be a cheap way to divert attention away from legislation or technical solutions like adblockers. The moment there was any significant uptick in usage for any reason, there would have been a competitive motivation for the networks to abandon DNT.
On-by-default wasn't a problem because it was some kind of fundamental paradigm shift, it was a problem because it meant that the setting would actually be turned on for normal people.
If it were actually about Microsoft breaking a sacred contract or something, it would not have been difficult for ad networks to detect the IE10 agent string and apply browser-specific policies. But for the most part very few companies ever did, because if you're an ad network and you realize you can get away with ignoring privacy settings on one browser, why on earth wouldn't you do the same for every other browser?
DNT was doomed from the start specifically because it relied on advertisers voluntarily participating, and advertisers are never going to disrupt their own business model voluntarily.
1. Your definition of PII. PII is defined in legislation in some states/countries, whereas other terms are used elsewhere. Some definitions are very loose, whereas for example, the EU definition of a close/equivalent (simply referred to as "personal data") is extremely strict (some might say too strict). If we take the EU definition, GA definitely collects "personal data" as it is 100% required to provide dashboard data on "unique visits".
2. Even if you take a looser definition of PII, by which Google could potentially provide all GA dashboard features without collecting any PII, you are still giving Google direct access to PII, and explicitly sending them some PII in some situations. So in this case, you're relying on your trust of Google's internal company policies on not storing that data that they receive. Given their track record in compliance with the law on data collection, there is very little reason to trust them.
Use decentraleyes to prevent common libraries (like Google ajax) from tracking you across sites.
Simple, they‘re being used to restore the main cookie. Stuff like this, just as the Chrome adblocker, are just a fig leave for plausible deniability. If you want reasonable protection, use Safari or Firefox with that Origin adblocker and the Multi-Container plugin against first-party tracking.
