Dark Patterns Deceiving You on The Internet to Take Your Money

Diji1 on 29/07/2016 - 10:45
Last edited 29/07/2016 - 12:07 by 1 other user

Just wanted to shared this fascinating (well, for me ;) article about the legal and sometime not so legal practices by many online businesses of manipulating users through the user interface and/or User Agreement into paying more money.

The article discusses the website which is a site that highlights these practices.)

They are talking about some of the largest businesses in existence including almost certainly many businesses that you the reader deals with. It makes my pet theory that AWS is simply a system designed to introduce unwanted charges a bit less mad than it used to sound :D Amazon does this along with the rest.

I think what struck me was how normal this is now but it took reading the article for me to wake up and see it for what it is - deliberate deception that is often in a legal grey area or just outright illicit - because it's just so … common these days.

Internet

Comments

  • Baysew on 29/07/2016 - 12:02

    Who would think that there are people on the internet that would take money from you ?

    I'm sure it's not what Malcolm Turnbull envisaged when he virtually invented the internet in Australia.

  • RockyRaccoon on 29/07/2016 - 12:56

    Probably sponsored by Telstra, Google, Samsung Apple and any other of your usual rants….

  • Kangal on 29/07/2016 - 13:39

    Known this for a long time.

    Only newbs get caught up in this scam.

  • cameldownunder on 29/07/2016 - 14:00

    One "Pattern" that I see on some sites, is that they offer a better specs product for less money then a lesser spec'ed one.
    For example a tablet with 4BG memory and 64GB Rom, cheaper then 2GB and 32GB.
    One might think: "Wow the better one is cheaper, they have made a mistake, let me buy it before they realize it"

    Another one ( pretty lame ) is when I receive an email, with apologies that they missed my email when sending out special offers, and that just for me they have
    some products.

  • bluesky on 30/07/2016 - 04:31

    Thanks for sharing this. Speaker made some good points at the end of talk. If there exists a professional code of conduct for UI designers, or employing Dark Patterns will likely lead to name-and-shame of the company, upcoming UI designers will have more ammunition to push back, when management put pressure on them to employ Dark Patterns.

    It also calls on us consumers to do more of the name-and-shame, when we find such practices employed by the companies.

  • [Deactivated] on 02/08/2016 - 14:27

    I have dark voices in my head trying to take my soul ???

    • scrimshaw on 04/08/2016 - 22:32

      To remove dark voices, you can purchase a voice-blocking plan for $6.99 a month, or $99.99 for a full year of voice-protection. We recommend the full year for the best value.

      • [Deactivated] on 05/08/2016 - 12:28

        Thanks, I ended up buying the SaTAN lite package but it appears to have DNS anal leakage, so the voices are still back-dooring me.

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