Outlawing Dark Patterns
“Dark patterns” is a term coined to describe user interfaces designed to manipulate people into giving up time, money or personal data that they didn’t intend to. A common example is the obstacle course you often have to go through to cancel a subscription to something online. Another example is the use of countdown timers to rush buyers into hasty decisions. They may not be out-and-out deceptive, but they do come close. Now, the US states of California and Washington are looking to pass laws to restrict this practice. <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/lawmakers-take-aim-at-insidious-digital-dark-patterns/>
If anyone wants to view a catalogue of this sort of thing, there is a litany of inventive manipulation posted over at /r/assholedesign, entertaining and disheartening in equal measure. On Sun, Jan 31, 2021 at 2:44 PM Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo(a)geek-central.gen.nz> wrote:
“Dark patterns” is a term coined to describe user interfaces designed to manipulate people into giving up time, money or personal data that they didn’t intend to. A common example is the obstacle course you often have to go through to cancel a subscription to something online. Another example is the use of countdown timers to rush buyers into hasty decisions. They may not be out-and-out deceptive, but they do come close.
Now, the US states of California and Washington are looking to pass laws to restrict this practice.
< https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/lawmakers-take-aim-at-insidious-...
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list -- wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz | To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: https://list.waikato.ac.nz/postorius/lists/wlug.list.waikato.ac.nz
On Tue, 9 Feb 2021 11:14:09 +1300, Matthew Skiffington wrote:
If anyone wants to view a catalogue of this sort of thing, there is a litany of inventive manipulation posted over at /r/assholedesign, entertaining and disheartening in equal measure.
Just had a look at that, and found a link to this article <https://hackaday.com/2022/10/26/flashing-booby-trapped-cisco-ap-with-openwrt-the-hard-way/> about how Cisco brought out a firmware update for their Meraki MR33 wi-fi access point, back in 2018 <https://github.com/riptidewave93/LEDE-MR33/issues/13#issuecomment-449849255>, with an interesting booby-trap in it: it detects an attempt to install a third-party open-source OS, and permanently bricks the device. However, some intrepid hacker figured out a workaround, sometime last year. This involves removing the Flash RAM chip, reprogramming it with an older, non-booby-trapped bootloader, and reattaching it -- not a procedure for the faint of heart ...
participants (2)
-
Lawrence D'Oliveiro -
Matthew Skiffington