40% of online shops tricking users with “dark patterns”

The European Commission has been looking at retail websites to see if they're misleading consumers with "dark patterns". Spoiler: Yes, they are.

The Commission, along with the national consumer protection authorities of 23 EU member states, plus Norway and Iceland, have released the results of their screening of online shops. In a sweep of 399 sites the investigation discovered that 148 of them contained at least one of the three dark patterns they were checked for.

Dark patterns

Dark patterns, …

consumer consumer protection consumers dark dark patterns european commission investigation national norway patterns protection results retail states websites yes