Skip to main content

Technology

How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

pudding.cool

I wanted to explore the malicious, confusing, and deceitful things that occur after signing up for digital services, as well as how design can nudge us to forget about a free trial or accidentally sign up for things that we didn’t intend to.

Dark patterns are often most egregious with subscriptions and free trials, especially when attempting to cancel, so I focused on those.

British gov’t aims to kill off Companies House’s Bobby Tables problem

thestack.technology

Unfortunately, the current Companies House name rules – while covering copy-cats and offensive language – do not cover attempts to poison data inputs.

This is a problem, because dozens of websites, databases and other processors pull in details from Companies House – and not all of them are good at sanitising their data inputs, which can be poisoned simply with a name.