Sort of like people are making a decision to carry a (smart)phone in their pocket wherever they go and thus implicitly having the opinion that "Yes I am being tracked, so what?", right?

While it is optional for an individual to opt-out from this behavior, it is not optional for masses of people to do so. It will not happen, because people don't care. They don't know, they are ignorant, they can't bother.

It would be outright foolish not to try to exploit all this data which can be gathered. It has enormous value for example in terms of commercial use and also national security. It isn't hard to come up with legitimate uses where data analysis is benefitical. Besides, if it goes through the internet, along the way there most certainly are hops/parties which would benefit from this data too. It would give "foreign" parties(whatever they might be/mean) an advantage, and that's not going to happen.

I think it is inevitable that lots and lots of data will be gathered about and of what we happen to do in our lives, online or otherwise. Either it is done openly(transparency) or secretly(sort of totalitarianism), but it will be done by someone somewhere. First, because it is possible, and second, because it is valuable.