As we all know some of the "consent" pop-ups have a first page of general settings, and then a "vendors" page to further deselect all the "legitimate interests".

I recently noticed that a fraction of the "vendors" allow deselecting the "legitimate interest" but have the "consent" tick box marked and unmodifiable.

Consider the following page:

https://www.brighthub.com/environment/renewable-energy/artic...

The following vendors have un-deselectable "consent" tickboxes:

Skimbit Ltd
Confiant Inc.
Lumen Research Limited
Visarity Technologies GmbH
DoubleVerify Inc.
Revcontent, LLC
Adssets AB
Integral Ad Science (incorporating ADmantX)
Mirando GmbH &amp; Co KG
Polar Mobile Group Inc.
Rockabox Media Ltd
Telecoming S.A.
Seenthis AB
HUMAN
Papirfly AS
NEXD
One Tech Group GmbH
illuma technology limited
CHEQ AI TECHNOLOGIES
Adjust Digital A/S
VRTCAL Markets Inc
Cavai AS
Kiosked Ltd
Protected Media LTD
Oracle Data Cloud - Moat
Bannernow, Inc.
Jetpack Digital LLC
GeoEdge
Ensighten
IVO Media Ltd
Online Media Solutions LTD
Mobkoi Ltd
Redbranch, Inc dba Fraudlogix
Alphalyr SAS
Silverbullet Data Services Group
Stream Eye OOD
adbalancer Werbeagentur GmbH
Somplo Ltd
Velocity Made Good LLC
Vyde Ltd.
Adelaide Metrics Inc
Sqreem Technologies Private Limited
TMT Digital Inc
dpa-infocom GmbH
Brandhouse/Subsero A/S
streaMonkey GmbH
Alkimi
Zeit Agency ApS
Sitewit, Corp
AccountInsight Ltd
Aderize, Inc.
fraud0 GmbH
Channel99, Inc.
Videobot Ltd
Appstock LTD.
Dando online LTD
EMBRACE Systems GmbH
Hiili SL
YIELDBIRD SP. Z O.O.
Volentio JSD Limited
BEAPUP SOLUTIONS LTD
Public Good Software Inc.
Kidoz Inc.
DataDome SA
Sarigato Sp. z o.o.
Gesher Software LTD dba bridgeupp
Playdigo Inc
Sipo Inc
EliteAppgrade
SpinX Pte Ltd
Creatopy INC
Codevelop Technologies GmbH
Adgrid Media, LLC
ProgrammaticX LTD
Nitrouppi LTD
9 Dots Media Ltd
Vudoo Pty Ltd
Mobavenue Media Pvt Ltd
Carbonatix LTD

1) What is up with these?

2) Are these even legal under GDPR rules?

3) Does this not nullify arguments by certain 3 letter agencies that users "consent" to their tracking?

4) Who is behind these companies? Any idea on how to approach this from an investigative journalism angle? Can we figure out the headquarters, employee counts, CEO's of these companies?

5) If "undeselectable consent tickboxes" qualify as legally valid consent, doesn't this set a precedent to foist off miryads of types of lack of consent as "consent"? Will this enable legalizing rape? Where does this Pandora's box end? How is this any different from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fQsrwBi2Jo

6) As far as I understand, an illegal contract is void. If the forms submitted by users contained undeselectable "consent tickboxes"; then the forms no longer constitute legal contracts. Observe that this is regardless of the preferences of all the other tickboxes: even if users were to lazy to deselect all the deselectable tickboxes, the mere presence of deselectable tickboxes voids these forms as contracts. This means that all the other vendors didn't receive any consent, since their specific submitted form-as-a-contract is void, even if the majority of the vendors had consent tickboxes that could be deselected. It would seem prudent for such companies to insist that the forms don't contain undeselectable tickboxes for any companies since it would nullify the consent they hope to receive.