Is your online purchase really your choice? A study finds over 95% of publicly listed companies involved in online consumer ...

While these deceptive practices may offer short-term gains for companies, they ultimately undermine consumer trust and can lead to significant legal repercussions. In the increasingly digital world, ...

When OpenAI rolled out its ChatGPT-4o update in mid-April 2025, users and the AI community were stunned—not by any groundbreaking feature or capability, but by something deeply unsettling: the updated ...

If you’ve ever had to call to cancel a subscription you signed up for online in seconds, uncheck a preselected agreement to receive ads in the mail or been tricked into upgrading to a premium economy ...

Dark patterns, also known as deceptive design or deceptive patterns, are essentially tricks. Websites and apps use dark patterns to manipulate users into making decisions they wouldn’t have otherwise ...

Digital design sounds innocuous enough. Dark patterns, less so. That’s the term for user interfaces which nudge or manipulate consumers into making choices they otherwise wouldn’t. You will recognise ...

French lawyer and entrepreneur Marie Potel-Saville, whom I met at Lisbon’s Web Summit, has a mission: to root out dark patterns in the digital world. Her company, Fair Patterns, has developed a range ...

You open a free app to do one simple thing. Before you even start, a full-screen message asks whether you want to try the paid version. The “Start free trial ...

Have you ever created an online account, only to find it seemingly impossible to close? How about receiving emails or notifications you don't remember signing up for? Or opening an app to be met with ...

How much are customers losing annually? At first, you may think these are nominal amounts, and they won’t make a big difference to an individual customer. However, when all these amounts are added up, ...

Dark patterns are web design features designed to trick users into sharing their data or spend more money. Watch out for tricks like hard-to-cancel subscriptions, hidden costs in the checkout process ...