It depends on the tracking. They are far more advanced than simple cookies these days. Some do use javascript to load things and/or report back without resorting to easily-deletable cookies. Whether something qualifies as malicious or not is a matter of opinion. Imho any tracking attempt by unnamed third parties (ie without my say so) is evil.
For example, Chrome keeps Google analytics connections open for 4 minutes since the last request, even cross sites. This is a cookie less, IP less of uniquely identifying a user.
