To be clear: I do not hate cookies in the sense of “culinary delight”. In fact, a soft choco-chip “big” cookie is one of my favorite things. So much so that I avoid them, fearing I might regain the habit of decades past.

No, the cookies I hate leave a bad taste in the mouth, the cookies that your favorite website leave behind so that advertisers may monitor your electronic comings and goings. Spying on you.

Apparently, sites have to ask permission of the user to install cookies, and the European Union, which is where I live, currently, is one of those tech killjoy organizations that demand users be informed of sites that feature cookies.

Like ESPN.com, which is trying to get me to sign off, again, on Bad Cookie tracking, and using some of the most annoying means possible to get it done.

Check, for example, this loathsome, weasel-worded screen that has been flopped onto ESPN’s site:

What I hate about this is the suggestion that the site and the trackers are doing me some sort of favor.

So. ABOUT COOKIES … all caps, in case you miss that the black box (above) is covering 90 percent of your screen.

Then the message: “To help make this website better, to improve and personalize your experience and for advertising purposes, are you happy to accept cookies and other technologies?”

This ticks me off. Especially the phrase “and you are happy to accept cookies” …

No, I am never happy with cookies. Never. Ever.

Just below that cloying sentence comes a big, wide blue bar labeled “YES” — to make things easy on all of us … just take your tracking malware — it’s good for you!” — and move on and let the machines figure out I look at the ESPN “MLB stats” page a lot, and pretty much never click on “women’s basketball”.

In a way it gets worse, when ESPN appears to offer choice in the matter with two smaller buttons: “More info here”, which takes you to the Disney page on cookies, which appears to be a lot of legalese that comes down to “your electronic overlords are trying to make this easy on everybody, so just click the big button”.

The other button, in the lower-right purports to inform you of your “cookie choices” — and goes on to tell you about how the approximately 100 sites listed are currently allowed to send me “targeted ads” — and I may “opt out” if I like. Opt out of targeted stuff. Not the generic ads. That comes with no ability to escape, if you want to be on ESPN.com.

Here is the text: “You can prevent the companies listed below from showing you targeted ads by submitting opt-outs. Opting-out will only prevent targeted ads so you may continue to see generic (non-targeted ads) from these companies after you opt-out.”

OK, that is slightly less creepy. Though it should be noted that my browser seems not to want to comply with the request to opt out (for my own good, of course), and I have no clear idea what I will see when I leave this blog post.

Probably something that still says “are you happy to receive cookies?”

No. No. A thousand times, no.