Witches and dark patterns

 

Image from Pixabay

She’s called Magica De Spell, Miss Tick, or Gundel Gaukeley, only to mention a few international names of this Disney character, and she lives on Mount Vesuvius. She is the sworn enemy of Scrooge McDuck, because she wants to steal his Number One Dime to melt it in the lava of her volcano into an amulet that should give her unprecedented powers.

The name of this cartoon character comes to mind when I hear the term dark patterns. Not only because of the similarity in color, but also because they have a similar goal: secretly taking something from you for their benefit.

You encounter dark patterns every day when you enter the internet and get one of those annoying cookie notifications. You have probably noticed that the button to agree to everything is often very prominent, while the option to deviate from it is really hard to find. Or you have to click very often because the option 'none' is missing. A dark pattern misguides the user in a certain direction and has you click on the most favorable option for that site, or entices you to make a purchase, or makes you provide more data than you should want. There are many forms of dark patterns. I will go through a few with you, and you will recognize them all. Incidentally, different sources use different names.

-        Confirshaming is a nice contraction of confirmation and shaming: when asked whether you want to order that delicious fresh food, the option 'no' is accompanied by an addition such as: "I'll have a microwave meal tonight".

-        Another great term is privacy zuckering, which of course includes a reference to Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. This is about sharing more personal information with your network than you would actually like.

-        Maybe you wanted to download some software that you found on the internet. You clicked on that big green download button and got something completely different than what you wanted. You looked again and discovered that for the software you actually wanted, you should have clicked on a less obvious button. That's called disguised ads.

-        “Book now! Only 3 rooms left!” If you’ve ever booked a holiday, you’ll probably be familiar with this one. It’s called fake scarcity. By pretending that the offer is about to expire, they want to entice you to make a quick decision.

-        Sometimes you wonder if reviews are real. Reviews from fellow customers can help you make your choice, but if the provider himself is behind those cheering texts, then it is fake social proof.

-        I ran into Hard to Cancel when a lottery offered a guaranteed “prize” in the first month if you would subscribe. I don’t like to leave free money behind, but I had planned to cancel after the first month from the start. Unlike getting in, getting out could not be done online; I had to call them, and after a long wait I got someone on the line who reacted rather grumpily to my cancellation.

-        Another well-known form of dark patterns is called nagging. For example, you will repeatedly receive offers in an app to switch to the paid version, or to enable a certain function. Sometimes the rejection option takes the form of “maybe later”, which is like a promise on your part. The idea behind nagging is – as in real life – that you agree to something in order to get rid of it.

-        Oh yes, preselection: the option "I would like to receive your newsletter" is already conveniently checked. Often there is more behind it - such as wanting to give you the feeling that other people also choose a certain option.

All this brings us to the question: is all this allowed? Well, that depends. Sometimes it is just smart marketing, as in the example of confirshaming. The story is different if deception is evident, like with false reviews. The European Data Protection Board has published a report on this subject. Of course, the GDPR is discussed in it, because transparency is an important concept there, while the term dark patterns already indicates that transparency is hard to find. The GDPR also applies the principle of fairness: your data is processed in your interest and that is done in line with what you could reasonably expect. Privacy by default is also an important principle; all options that could infringe on your privacy must be turned off by default. The example of the newsletter is an example where they didn’t comply with this rule, just like those pages where you can set cookie preferences and where everything is turned on.

Some things are allowed, even if they are not so nice or even unethical. Maybe you did not know that this phenomenon is called dark patterns and what world lies behind it. Now that you know, you might deal with it differently in the future. I myself like to get back at someone who wants to deveice me, by doing the opposite of what they want. Magica De Spell will not get my Number One Dime!

 

And in the big bad world…

• Microsoft has rolled back a security patch, which left Windows 10 computers vulnerable for months.
• ChatGPT is not immune to social engineering.
• Microsoft is preparing for the world of quantum computing, which will make current cryptography vulnerable.
• Meta devours public Facebook and Instagram posts to feed its AI.
• a criminal was caught with a laptop full of stolen credit card information.
• The expiration of a domain name registration can have major consequences.
• This phishing email promises you free extra storage space at Google. [DUTCH]
• things are getting too hot for criminal Telegram users.
• you can still see WhatsApp’s 'view once' messages more than just once.