SendGrid appending a tracking pixel even when disabled

Please be aware that SendGrid appends a tracking pixel to your campaign emails (e.g. Single Sends) even if you have disabled it:

SendGrid tracking settings (everything was/is disabled):

I contacted SendGrid support, only to get a blunt answer of “yeah it’s like that for campaign emails”:

Now, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t this a egregious violation of the GDPR in the EU? Here’s a bit more context:

I had/have about 60 recipients that had asked me to notify them when I’m releasing an MVP of an app. I tried to send a regular email but it was marked as spam. Probably because of new domain? Or wording? Or links? Not sure.

I decided to sent the email using SendGrid’s Single Send but as I had vowed to myself and my recipients, I won’t be setting any tracking whatsoever. In this case, I didn’t even have a unambiguous consent to track them like SendGrid’s documentation states:

If you are using our Marketing Campaigns service and sending mail to recipients in jurisdictions that require this kind of unambiguous consent, it is important to ensure that your recipients have provided consent for cookies and other tracking before you send mail.

But here I am, tracking my recipients without even my own, sender’s, consent?