A study of 642 platforms conducted by ICPEN found that almost 76 percent of them use at least one dark scheme, and almost 68 percent use more than one. Common strategies include making it difficult to turn off automatic subscription renewals, a practice seen on 81 percent of the platforms studied. Other tactics include coercive actions that require you to provide personal information to perform basic functions.
The GPEN report also pays particular attention to privacy-related patterns, finding that more than 89% of sites and apps surveyed use complex and confusing language in their privacy policies, while 57% of users select the least secure privacy settings by default.
These findings, the experts wrote, highlight the need to improve consumers’ digital literacy so that they can effectively navigate such deceptive practices.
Source: Ferra
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
