The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) on 30 November notified Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023.
Key points
- These guidelines were issued under section 18 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. These have been notified by the CCPA in the Official Gazette on November 30.
- The guidelines aim to prevent deceptive behaviour of e-commerce companies by defining certain wrongful practices known as ‘dark patterns’ as offences under consumer protection law.
- Dark patterns intended to trick users to take unintended actions such as making purchase decisions, amount to misleading advertisement or unfair trade practice or violation of consumer rights.
- The Annexure-1 of guidelines, have a list of 13 specified dark patterns. These are— false urgency; basket sneaking; confirm shaming; forced action; subscription trap; interface interference; bait and switch; drip pricing; disguise advertisement; nagging; trick question; Saas billing; and rogue malwares.
- Guidelines for the prevention of misleading advertisements and endorsements for misleading advertisements, 2022 will also be applicable on e-commerce entities.
- Dark patterns will also include showing false popularity of a product or service to manipulate user decisions.
