The study investigates compliance with privacy laws like Article 8 GDPR and CCPA on children's websites. They analyzed 2,066 educational and gaming websites, finding that only a minority address consent dialogs for children. This suggests potential non-compliance with GDPR, raising concerns about data protection for young users.

This paper investigates the impact of "loss-gain framing" as a dark pattern strategy on user data disclosure behavior in mobile settings. Understanding how framing affects users' willingness to share personal information is essential for privacy policy development and user interface design. In an online user study involving 848 participants, they tested different framings (positive, negative, neutral) of app permission requests. Surprisingly, negative framing increased disclosure rates, while positive framing reduced them, possibly due to heightened suspicion. These findings carry implications for designing interfaces that promote informed, privacy-conscious decision-making.

This document provides supplemental materials directly cited in the proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium 2024 entitled “The Effect of Design Patterns on (Present and Future) Cookie Consent Decisions”

This research aims to uncover and categorize deceptive design practices within 3D environments commonly found in PC games. Through a survey involving 259 adult respondents, we identified six distinct categories of deceptive design patterns within a popular free-to-play 3D game: Predatory Monetization, Default to Purchase, UI Misdirection, Emotional Interpersonal Persuasion, Physical Placement, and Narrative Obligation. This work is vital as 3D and VR gaming gain momentum, and the gaming industry increasingly adopts "freemium" monetization models. It highlights the importance of understanding and addressing deceptive design in this evolving gaming landscape.

In the evolving landscape of online commerce, dark patterns pose a significant challenge, blurring the line between persuasion and manipulation. This Article focuses on the European Union's legal response to these issues, highlighting the need to protect consumer autonomy. It introduces a novel framework that classifies dark patterns into six categories of autonomy violations, providing policymakers with a clear path to regulate and safeguard consumers' decision-making independence.

In the realm of online privacy, dark patterns are design strategies that often lead users to disclose more information than they intend. The research, focusing on older adults (above 65) and young adults (18-25), reveals the effectiveness of these dark patterns. Positive framing and opt-out privacy defaults increase disclosure behavior, while negative justifications reduce privacy concerns. Notably, older adults show both increased disclosure and heightened privacy concerns when exposed to these strategies. Privacy concerns, however, do not hinder disclosure, highlighting the potential risks dark patterns pose, especially to older users. This raises important ethical questions about safeguarding digital privacy for all age groups.

In today's digitalized society, mobile digital games (MDGs) play a pivotal role in early childhood education. However, concerns about problem gaming and unethical design patterns in MDGs for young children have emerged. The analysis of the top five free games for ages 0-5 on the App Store (February 2023) revealed the presence of temporal, monetary, and psychological dark patterns. These include aesthetic manipulations, paywalls, and elements resembling gambling rewards. The study emphasizes the need for digital literacy and responsible game design to ensure healthier gaming experiences for young children.

The study focuses on a specific dark pattern within cookie consent dialogs on websites: the absence of a clear opt-out option alongside the opt-in choice. This pattern was investigated across five European countries by crawling 23,303 websites. The findings were striking: 13,522 websites had an accept option, but only 6,016 had a reject option on the initial layer. This suggests that more than half of the websites they analyzed employed this dark pattern, potentially violating GDPR and highlighting the need for improved ethical design practices.

In e-commerce, limited-time and limited-quantity cues are often used to influence consumer decisions. However, our study with 202 participants suggests that these cues can lead to perceptions of lower benevolence from online vendors. Websites without such cues provided a better user experience. Limited-time cues even elicited frustration. These findings have implications for dark pattern research, designers, and online vendors, emphasizing the need for ethical design in e-commerce.