How deceptive design is used to compromise your privacy and how to fight back

https://consciousdigital.org/deceptive-design-patterns/

by yoaviram • 2 years ago

180 56 2 years ago

Actually never thought about scrubbing my data from anywhere. How many folks take an active approach to managing their “footprint”? I’m sure there are fringe cases where this becomes important but in general practicallly I have not done anything to wipe my data.

anticorporate• 2 years ago

How many folks take an active approach to managing their “footprint”?

I actively manage my footprint now, but I have to admit that getting started was a bit overwhelming. It's roughly on-par with switching over to a password manager for someone who was not using one before. It involves a lot of going through your inbox to locate accounts and then navigating a slew of different patterns for how to shut down your account, or at least to scrub information you don't want revealed from those accounts.

Once you get started, though, maintenance mode is fairly easy. Those "terms of use update" emails are very handy in picking up accounts you forgot you had and shutting them down. That, plus having a couple of templates handy to copy/paste when you get individualized outreach from sales teams.

The hardest part is that the majority of companies seem to have no idea how to comply with requests, which leads me to believe the number of people requesting removal of their data is much, much lower than I would hope or expect. It's generally incompetence, not malice. Or probably more accurately, it can be a complex technical task that requires interdepartmental cooperation to implement a good system, and few companies are jumping up and down to fund expensive or complicated compliance efforts in their sales and marketing teams .

emsixteen• 2 years ago

That, plus having a couple of templates handy to copy/paste when you get individualized outreach from sales teams

Do you mind elaborating/sharing?

sillystuff• 2 years ago

The hardest part is that the majority of companies seem to have no idea how to comply with requests... It's generally incompetence, not malice.

After many experiences of broken CCPA compliance I'm beginning to wonder if there is not a strategic component to the widespread incompetence.

Last night, I tried a CCPA request against keenan.com that a former employer had, apparently, "shared" my information with several years ago. Keenan.com recently sent out data breach announcements to let us know that they failed to properly secure the personal data they collected/hoarded on us via our [past] employers, and I wanted them to tell me what they potentially disclosed and then delete my data. From the email bounce message, they use Microsoft o356 hosted email, and configured their ccpa contact email address they list on the keenan.com website, "ccpa@assuredpartners.com" to only accept mail from internal senders on their own domain(s). Maybe the IT for keenan.com/assuredpartners.com is a clown show (they did hoard data they no longer needed, and failed to secure the data they collected/hoarded), but it seems unlikely that every company, of the many I've encountered with broken CCPA processes, would be similarly incompetent.

Several phone requests to other companies, using the CCPA contact number on their websites were answered by folks who have no idea what the CCPA even is.

One of the largest data brokers in the US failed to remove my data following a CCPA request until I contacted the VP of their legal department directly.

Most of my requests have either encountered (possibly strategic) incompetence as the above, or malicious compliance, where they make the process as time consuming and annoying as they possibly can. E.g., a web form that requires filling out the entire form repeatedly for each right you wish to exercise under the CCPA.

TLDR, maybe evil companies are just being evil?

aqfamnzc2• 2 years ago

Related - Once I switched to using a password manager, I use it as a convenient checklist to go through all my never-used accounts and request deletion once every few years.

dfxm122• 2 years ago

Maybe this is a cynical, defeatist approach, but I operate under the assumption that if I've ever put data out there, it's already been sucked up by multiple databases & deleting it from the source would be meaningless.

EvanAnderson2• 2 years ago

Yours is the only reasonable attitude. Given companies' track records preventing data breaches you're right to assume that any data about you being stored is effectively stored indefinitely.

Dalewyn• 2 years ago

The internet never forgets, as the old saying goes.

svachalek3• 2 years ago

Like most defeatist attitudes, it's taking a realistic fact and then drawing the wrong conclusion. No point washing the dishes, they're just going to get dirty again. No point wearing a seatbelt, we all die sometime. Etc etc.

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

You should not only assume that anything you put onto the Internet will get sucked up by companies and become un-deletable, you should assume that it will eventually be freely searchable by anyone, including your spouse, employer, neighbors, worst enemy, and so on... because breaches happen all the time.

People should also understand that "put onto the Internet" doesn't just mean typing something into a box and hitting the "post" button. It also means:

- "Private" messages that go through an intermediary web service

- All forms of cloud storage, including (especially) your photos

- Any browsing history that can be associated with an IP address that can be tied back to you

A lot of this stuff is one leaked password or SIM swap away from being public data.

jmbwell• 2 years ago

I assume taking any dispositive action at all only signals a different kind of “engagement” to be tracked and eventually monetized if not outright abused.

Like when you “Press 1 to be removed” or “text STOP to opt out” — all it does is move you to the mailing list they have for people who think they’re doing something that has any effect. I’m sure that’s valuable to a lot of marketers.

yetanother12345• 2 years ago

"wipe my data"

You may be referring to "hiding your data from your own view" ...

For SoMe and other organizations that have very large databases it is a very common procedure (if not outright "best practice") to NOT delete anything, but in stead "mark as deleted". The data is still there, it is just no longer visible.

Of course such a practice means that your data (even if you think you have deleted it) is still vulnerable to all the standard (and non-standard) issues, from internal data mining over data breaches to governmental requests, etc.

The only surefire way to avoid exposing yourself is to avoid interacting with these services at all.

hn_acker2• 2 years ago

You may be referring to "hiding your data from your own view"

If you turn off watch history/location history/search history, I assume that Google prevents your local device from saving the history but saves all of the history data to their servers anyway. In my head, I describe my conspiracy theory as "delete your data = prevent only you from using your data".

garspin• 2 years ago

For many products/services I use a disposable email/login (from duck.com) - the site gets some data, but it's wrong (DoB 1 Jan 2000), anonymous and unrelated to any of my other disposable logins.

Obviously doesn't work for anything that needs real phone# or real physical address, but anything to reduce risk of data breach, cross-referencing data, tracking helps.

I also use disposable digital credit card number (from wise.com) for non-mainstream sites.

It's a lot easier than having to navigate the 'delete all my data' maze.

snide• 2 years ago

I'm one of those people that tries as best I can to use Google products while also managing my privacy. One fun thing is watching how privacy controls roll out across Google products. As an example... I turn my watch history off on YouTube. That stuff rolls out immediately on youtube.com, but took months to make it to the Android version on my Shield TV. There were definitely gap months where I'd see settings that were supposedly turn off in some places, weren't actually turned off in others.

The design patterns can get pretty aggressive. Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank, asking me to turn on my watch history. A lot of time this is presented in a way not to mention privacy, but to instead promote a "feature". "Turn this feature on", not "Turn off your privacy". You get quite a lot of roadblocks when you turn off settings like this, making the products pretty hard to use.

It's nearly impossible to keep up with and figure it all out, and I'm a UX designer by trade! A lot of these dark patterns are the reasons I've moved more and more to alternative tools like Kagi and Fastmail...etc.

bluGill• 2 years ago

I always search for videos on various peertube instances first. There is too much stuff on youtube that isn't available elsewhere at all though. (I can find a dozen fix whatever problem for my car, I haven't found even one elsewhere)

lancesells• 2 years ago

Piped and invidious instances are mirrors of Youtube.

blitzar• 2 years ago

Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank, asking me to turn on my watch history.

Google right now fills my youtube.com homepage with what is "popular" - seeing what is widely consumed crushes the last hopes I have for civilization and makes me almost want to turn back on my watch history so I can be oblivious to reality.

benterix• 2 years ago

To make it a bit brighter for you, many of these are just watched for a few seconds by bored teenagers sitting on a toilet without nothing better[0] to do. I'd be very surprised if people actually deliberately sat on the couch and spend hours watching this crap.

[0] At least this is what they think/feel

svachalek3• 2 years ago

It's weird, I've had mine go back and forth between blank, popular garbage, and what seems to be inferred from like/subscribe data without using watch history. I assume this is some A/B testing flag they use and somehow I end up in different experiments.

aqfamnzc2• 2 years ago

Oh man, me too. The garbage that fills the homepage of yt I think is truly the least-common-denominator bottom barrel stuff. We really have raced to the bottom with clickbait titles, thumbnails with "WOW" faces and neon colors, etc. (And that stuff really works! I find myself tempted sometimes to click on one just to see if some outrageous claim or feat is really true.)

temporallobe• 2 years ago

If you pause your watch history in Youtube, it disables suggestions in your feed and nags you to turn it back on. This is definitely a dark pattern that tries to coerce users into giving up some privacy. It’s completely unnecessary and disappointing, especially for premium users like myself.

alwayslikethis• 2 years ago

The fact that you are still paying despite this shows they can get away with this. Though for me, I guess it's a good thing. Without a feed I am much less inclined to continue on the site.

BobaFloutist• 2 years ago

Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank

That's funny, I specifically have an add on to do that for me!

mikub• 2 years ago

I have watch history turned off for long as it's possible. When they started showing me the blank page with "Turn this feature on" I was pleasently surprised because I prefer this to the stupid preview pictures with people making happy/sad faces, forming a heart with their hand or some other bullshit they can come up with. God I really really hate that stuff.

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

Yea, I really appreciate the bare YouTube home screen that they present when you have Watch History turned off. It's clean and basic, reminiscent of the main Google search page before they stuffed it with animation, popups, dickbars and the usual cruft.

The passive aggressive "Your watch history is off" warning that you can't dismiss is the really the only thing bad about it.

AndrewKemendo• 2 years ago

They literally slow video loads based on if you have an ad blocking script running on your own machine.

It’s not even hidden, they promote this “feature”

nokya• 2 years ago

Which is a good thing. Why reward stealers? YouTube is not a free service and they have all the right to engage into aggressive practice once you decide to unlawfully bypass their ads.

Let's not confuse things here:

- deceptive UI/UX to encourage users to surrender their privacy

- profiling paid or unpaid users

- displaying ads

Only two of the above are issues.

rqtwteye• 2 years ago

Same here. Kagi and Fastmail are doing exactly what they are advertised as. With other platforms I feel constantly manipulated into something I don’t really understand but that’s pretty clearly against my interests.

Maybe there will be a backlash large enough to move away from these huge ad supported platforms to more focused platforms that actually have the users interest in mind. One can keep dreaming

lilsoso• 2 years ago

Forward all your Gmail email to a more private service like Mailbox.org and read your Gmail from there. Then you won't be logged into Google products nearly as often. Watch Youtube with various browser plugins to skip ads etc.

Though, I find it's difficult to avoid Google on your phone. I have Google Maps where I'm not logged in but they know who I am as I'm logged into Google Voice.

speckx• 2 years ago

Also, look at the deceptive patterns of the Hall of Shame, which has hundreds of examples of deceptive patterns used by companies worldwide.

https://www.deceptive.design/hall-of-shame

foundart• 2 years ago

If server is overloaded, use https://web.archive.org/web/20240215135340/https://conscious...

yoaviram• 2 years ago

Direct link to the guide (PDF): https://consciousdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/dece...

kls0e• 2 years ago

The slides include a collection of e-mail templates on how to react to different deceptive patterns - useful! Thanks.

nottorp• 2 years ago

Isn't squeezing all the info in a bunch of slides "requiring a disproportionate effort" ?

hn_acker2• 2 years ago

Indeed, the slides at the bottom of the featured article are garbage. You have to use the buttons in the bottom left to go to the next and previous slides respectively. Additionally, the PDF renderer they use is weird or they used the wrong file, because the text can't be selected. Every slide is an image. You can't full-screen the slides viewer either.

Anyway, if you're like me (i.e. you expected the guide to be on the featured page), you didn't find out about the PDF until someone else (user yoaviram) posted the PDF in a comment. The word "guide" has a link to https://consciousdigital.org/deceptive-patterns/, which redirects to https://consciousdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/dece... . The text in the PDF is real.

WaitWaitWha• 2 years ago

I just watched someone complete their tax return online through a commercial service.

At login they were asked for a phone number, which she refused and chose "skip". When she got to the end of the filling, just before submission, the system refused to move on without a mobile phone where text could be sent. Oncethe text message was sent, moved on. No way to remove the number from the account.

There is no need for the number. Deceptive design in the beginning then extortion at the end.

There are people without mobile phones by choice and by force.

Liquix• 2 years ago

that's a tried and true dark pattern. require little to no information to begin using the service -> user invests time and effort -> demand personal data AFTER they have invested -> people are more likely to give up their privacy because closing the tab means throwing away all the time they just spent. scummy

otteromkram• 2 years ago

Almost impossible to do if you are a job seeker. Either you comply with a company's privacy agreement...or you don't apply for the role.

I'm still not sure why companies want to send SMS messages to candidates. Email or phone calls aren't fast enough? Come on.

kjkjadksj2• 2 years ago

Speaking of deceptive design, anyone know how to get apple to effectively “deny and do not ask again” for things like socket filters? A real pain to have to deny a cisco popup 3 times in a row every time I reboot the machine. Then again this is how macos handles things like itunes account prompts every time I brush against the play pause buttons (ask 3 times in a row like a toddler might then forget for next time).

Animats• 2 years ago

Here's the link to report spam from a Google email account.[1] This is for non-Google customers. Try to find it from Google's help pages.

When you get there, you have to parse the email by hand, extracting subject, header, and body, and paste those into separate form blocks. That could be trivially automated, but no, that would make it too easy.

Gmail is about as spam-heavy as Hotmail at this point. I'm tempted to route everything not whitelisted from Google to the junk folder.

[1] https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse

peter_d_sherman• 2 years ago

"Deceptive Design" -- now that phrase is going into my 2024 lexicon!

(Although, we should always consider Hanlon's Razor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor): "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" when levelling allegations that a given company or companies have intentionally engaged in "Deceptive Design".)

Still, "Deceptive Design" is a very descriptive phrase given its terseness...

But there must also be a "corollary phrase" -- to describe the same effect while reflecting non-malicious intent, AKA just plain stupidity and/or unintentional ignorance...

How about:

"User Intent Non-Preserving User Interface" (UINPUI)?

Anyway, from a linguistic standpoint and used properly in the correct contexts, "Deceptive Design" could be a very useful phrase...

How deceptive design is used to compromise your privacy and how to fight back

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