[HN Gopher] How deceptive design is used to compromise your priv...
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How deceptive design is used to compromise your privacy and how to
fight back
Author : yoaviram
Score : 155 points
Date : 2024-02-15 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (consciousdigital.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (consciousdigital.org)
| pettycashstash2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > That, plus having a couple of templates handy to copy/paste
| when you get individualized outreach from sales teams
|
| Do you mind elaborating/sharing?
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| Not op, but I usually use the web form or an email address
| provided by the company. An email is great for having a
| "paper trail." Realistically, though, they either will
| comply or else there's not much you can do.
|
| I include a snippet like this one, which is for paper mail:
|
| I'm writing to request that you please remove me from your
| postal mailings list. I no longer wish to receive your
| mailings. Please, also, do not rent or sell my name or
| address to other organizations.
| sillystuff wrote:
| > 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?
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| 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.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| 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.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| 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.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| When the penalty barely reaches the level of "speeding
| ticket", there is no incentive for them to comply.
| gingerlime wrote:
| the penalty can be significant under GDPR, but
| enforcement is lacking severely
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Malicious attackers don't have to comply with GDPR. Even
| the best steward is one data breach away from public
| disclosure.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The internet never forgets, as the old saying goes.
| svachalek wrote:
| 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.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They aren't wrong about everything being crawled though in
| this case.
| pettycashstash2 wrote:
| How do you assume defeatist attitude? My time is more
| valuable than to spend hours filling out removal forms.
| Doing the removal has zero measurable perceived if not
| actual benefit to me. If someone wants the data there are n
| ways to get it. I spend my time on more value add
| activities
| tremon wrote:
| _How do you assume defeatist attitude?_
|
| Might have something to do with the GP's choice of words:
|
| > Maybe this is a cynical, defeatist approach
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It would be helpful to learn possible _correct_ conclusions
| in this specific case, if I 've jumped to a wrong one.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > "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.
| garspin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Piped and invidious instances are mirrors of Youtube.
| userbinator wrote:
| They're more like proxies.
| blitzar wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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
| twohaibei wrote:
| I thought that too, until I visited my colleague who turned
| on their tv on those braincell killing videos and presented
| it as entertainment.
| svachalek wrote:
| 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.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| svachalek wrote:
| There's still a subscription feed though, a chronologically
| sorted list of only stuff you asked for. It's a beautiful
| thing, a relic of a more civilized age.
| banannaise wrote:
| I think one of the big lessons of the last few
| years/decades is that the wallet vote is ineffective at
| best, in large part because many companies are doing far
| more to entrench customer lock-in than provide customer
| value, and you can't really move to an alternative product
| if the alternatives are all doing the same thing.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| > Google right now makes my youtube.com homepage blank
|
| That's funny, I specifically have an add on to do that for me!
| mikub wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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"
| rqtwteye wrote:
| 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
| speckx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| If server is overloaded, use
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240215135340/https://conscious...
| yoaviram wrote:
| Direct link to the guide (PDF): https://consciousdigital.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/04/dece...
| kls0e wrote:
| The slides include a collection of e-mail templates on how to
| react to different deceptive patterns - useful! Thanks.
| nottorp wrote:
| Isn't squeezing all the info in a bunch of slides "requiring a
| disproportionate effort" ?
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| _" 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...
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