How companies manipulate you online – and what the FTC is doing to protect you

When you’re online, some companies try to trick you into buying things you don’t want. Or into giving them permission to use your personal information. The use of these deceptive designs, known as dark patterns, is on the rise, according to a new report from the FTC.

For decades, unscrupulous direct mail marketers and brick-and-mortar retailers have relied on design tricks and psychological tactics, such as pre-checked boxes, hard-to-find-and read disclosures, and confusing cancellation policies, to get consumers to part with their money or personal data. As more and more commerce has moved online, so too have these manipulative design practices—termed “dark patterns”—only they have grown in scale and sophistication, creating ever greater challenges for consumers.

So, what do these dark patterns look like — and how do they take your money and your data?

Companies deploy a variety of dark patterns. Here are a few examples:

• They place online ads that look like editorial content.
• They hide fees and charges until late in the buying process.
• They offer a free trial that leads to a recurring subscription charge.
• They have processes that make it hard to cancel a subscription.
• They collect personal information even if they don’t need it to complete a transaction.
• They give you confusing privacy choices that trick you into giving away your information.

One example of this design experimentation is in the FTC’s action against Credit Karma. Credit Karma advertises third-party financial products, such as credit cards, and provides links for consumers to apply for offers.  Credit Karma conducted A/B testing, which is an experiment where a company shows consumers two or more variants of something, such as an advertisement or a webpage, to determine which one performs better. Credit Karma compared how consumers reacted to being told that they had been “pre-approved” for a credit card (a false claim, according to the FTC’s complaint) versus being told that they had “Excellent” odds of being approved. The company ultimately decided to employ the allegedly false “pre-approved” claim, which the A/B testing had shown yielded a greater click rate.

To learn more about these tactics and what the FTC is doing to protect you, check out the report, Bringing Dark Patterns to Light.

If we, as consumers, identify companies and websites using deceitful tactics, we should take a few minutes and report them on the FTC website: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/