Be wary of deception through user interface design

The ‘free-to-paid conversion’ is a highly popular business model for a large variety of subscription-based services, including streaming services, wellness services and software applications. With ‘free trial’ for a limited period as the bait, they hope to convert as many consumers as possible into paid subscribers.

There’s nothing wrong with the business model — in fact, it is advantageous to both the parties, provided it is founded on honest principles. Unfortunately, that is not always so, and businesses are known to resort to highly unethical means to get paid subscriptions. For example, while taking the consumer’s consent for the free trial, the service provider asks for credit card details and gets the ‘authorisation’ for auto-renewal through the credit card, using pre-checked boxes that are designed to escape consumer attention. The other method is to use the ‘small print’ to automatically convert the free service into a paid service — with terms and conditions that put the onus on the consumer to ask for discontinuation of the service at the end of the free period, failing which the service will automatically be converted into a paid service. Some businesses may also ask the consumer to pay a token amount of Re 1 to get the free service — a trick to get the consumer’s credit card information.

Such deception does not happen by inadvertence, but by design, through user interfaces specifically conceived and created to exploit and hoodwink consumers. And in the online ecosystem, such unfair trade practices have a different lexicon: digital dark patterns. Last fortnight, a consumer told me about how an online seller from whom she bought some clothes, claimed that he had a ‘No questions asked return policy’. However, when she tried to return a set of clothes that she did not like, the user interface prevented her from returning it. In fact, what was described as ‘returnable’ at the time of purchase, suddenly became ‘non-returnable’ when she tried to send back the clothes! This is again deceit by design. Businesses deliberately get ‘user experience’ designers to create such software that manipulates consumer choices and purchases, adversely affecting their rights.

Several months ago, I wrote about many such ‘dark patterns’ to warn consumers about them. Today, I am coming back to the subject because the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has now stepped in to check such unethical, unfair and anti-consumer practices. The Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023, notified under the Consumer Protection Act last fortnight, not only define dark patterns, but also give detailed illustrations of such practices and say, “No person, including any platform, shall engage in any dark pattern practice.” The guidelines apply to all platforms selling goods and services in India, besides advertisers and sellers.

The guidelines, in the annexure, give a number of illustrations of dark patterns under 13 heads. The ‘subscription deception’ that I mentioned in the beginning is squarely covered under two headings. Under the caption ‘Software as a service billing’, the CCPA gives the following examples: (a) no notification is given to the user when free trial is converted to paid; (b) the user’s account is debited without being notified; (c) shady credit card authorisation practices are employed to deceive consumers.

Again under the head ‘Subscription trap’, the guidelines refer to four types of dark patterns: (i) making cancellation of a paid subscription impossible or a complex and lengthy process; (ii) hiding the cancellation options for a subscription; (iii) forcing a user to provide payment details or authorisation for auto debit to avail a free subscription, and (iv) making the instructions related to cancellation of subscription ambiguous, confusing and cumbersome.

In my earlier article, I had referred to online platforms selling, through subterfuge, travel insurance along with domestic air tickets, using pre-checked boxes opting for travel insurance.

The guidelines on dark patterns cover such machinations also under the heading “Basket sneaking’, and describe how, using software designs, online platforms or sellers sneak in an additional product or service not chosen by the consumer, thereby adding to the cost. Similarly, forcing a user to share personal information linked with Aadhaar or credit card, even when such details are not necessary for making the intended purchase, is also a dark pattern and prohibited as ‘forced action’ under the guidelines.

I would urge consumers to go through the guidelines (available on the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs’ website) in order to understand such manipulations, and also complain to the CCPA (email: com-ccpa@nic.in) whenever they come across such dark patterns. All these are unfair trade practices and violate consumer rights and the CCPA is fully empowered to take appropriate action, including imposition of penalty on the perpetrators.