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Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

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Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#271

Post by antocv »

bottled_poe wrote: post #165
saberworks wrote: post #161

Does it count if there's no user interface? Amazon has my email address, I've been a customer since the late-nineties. They keep inventing new email lists and signing me up for them. Each time I get a new "newsletter" it says something like, "You got this message because you're subscribed to the 'Tablet News' newsletter." I click the unsubscribe link to remove myself from it. Along with the unsubscribe link there's a…

Not just Amazon, I am constantly clicking through those unsubscribe links but just get auto-signed up for new lists. Fuck you Amazon and anyone else that does this. I'll buy your junk when and if I need to. Leave me alone and stop wasting my life.

Click filter, add rule to delete from domain.

But really the problem got so bad I had to stop using gmail alltogether.

Moved over to mail.yandex.com and now I do not get interrupted anymore in my life.

Thank you email and IM and "notifications" but no thank you, if I ever receive a notification of any kind, that account will either get nuclear delete option or disabled forever.

Time to move to new email providers and new emails, and stop pretending email address is an ID, because its not, its a mailbox, when it gets full create a new one, and only people you care about and when you care will receive its attention.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#272

Post by DanBC »

test1235 wrote: post #253
username223 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never click a spammer's "unsubscribe" links -- that just tells them they have a valid account. If you use a big email provider like gmail, flag them as spam. Otherwise, make a rule in your mail client to automatically file anything from their domain to the trash.

I've had good success with unsubscribing from legitimate mailing lists using the links at the bottom of an email. It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake. Real spam however, rarely makes it into my inbox - it gets filtered out and deleted without ever being opened.

> It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters

If they're not confirming your opt in they're spamming you, especially if your opt-in is the result of a default-checked check box.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#273

Post by douche »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #270
test1235 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had good success with unsubscribing from legitimate mailing lists using the links at the bottom of an email. It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake. Real spam however, rarely makes it into my inbox - it gets filtered out and deleted without ever being opened.

> It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake. It is. Default checked "subscribe" boxes during sign in, hidden settings, new lists which you are auto subscribed to; it's a never ending battle and the incentives are wrong. If there was no unsubscribe link but only the spam button, publishers would be much cl…

Half the time, clicking the unsubscribe button leads you to another form that is almost impossible to comprehend, which results in (maybe) unsubscribing you from one list, but subscribing you to fourteen other newsletters and update and special offer lists, for a net increase in spam.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#274

Post by antocv »

shostack wrote: post #120

Is there a category for grouping notifications such that spammy notifications are lumped in with other important ones you might want to receive? Google Photos is a big culprit unfortunately with their photo backup. They keep pinging a notification to get me to remove local versions that are backed up in the cloud. I don't want to do that. The only way to remove the notification seems to be disabling all app notificat…

Do you even actually have "important" notifications you might want to receive?

Is any automated system more important than your focus?

What I have is, disallow or delete the app or "service" as soon as I receive a "notification" from it, only my wife and family is allowed to light up the led on my phone.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#275

Post by mnw21cam »

douche wrote: post #273
nothrabannosir wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake. It is. Default checked "subscribe" boxes during sign in, hidden settings, new lists which you are auto subscribed to; it's a never ending battle and the incentives are wrong. If there was no unsubscribe link but only the spam button, publishers would be much cl…

Half the time, clicking the unsubscribe button leads you to another form that is almost impossible to comprehend, which results in (maybe) unsubscribing you from one list, but subscribing you to fourteen other newsletters and update and special offer lists, for a net increase in spam.

If the email says "click here to unsubscribe", then it should do exactly what it says. Taking you to a page that allows you subsequently unsubscribe is not sufficient.

And yes, you should only ever follow links for companies that you are confident are not spamming you out of the blue, because of the danger that you are just confirming your email address is active.

My other gripe is that I'm not sure how anyone is going to tell that I have clicked on a word in an email, given that it's displayed on an xterm. But if they say that by clicking on it I am unsubscribed, it's their problem to make sure it happens.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#277

Post by vanderZwan »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #269
el_benhameen wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going forward, you can append "+whatever" to the username portion of your email address, e.g. You+spam@gmail.com, and gmail and most other providers I've used will ignore that part. Use it to trace the sharing of that address. I used that when signing up for a particular mailing list and found that my address was shared with about a dozen other marketers.

This comes up every time and that's just too much of a pain in the ass for basically no reward. Do you think spammers are too stupid to strip out the + part themselves? Its not worth the effect to even open the emails so having the + doesn't personally help me. I'd have to worry about having a different email address for every service I use? no thanks.

> Do you think spammers are too stupid to strip out the + part themselves?

No, but they are only targeting gullible people anyway so they don't bother:

> Finally, this approach suggests an answer to the question ["Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria"]? Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#278

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

redwards510 wrote: post #137
mvid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinder is the worst I have seen, they require you to pick between 1-5 stars to get the dialog to go away at all. Guess who always gets one star.

Tinder has another horrible UI trick, not sure if it qualifies as dark pattern or just terrible coding. On Android, they require you to enable the global option "Always allow Wifi scanning" in order to get your location. If this is disabled, they pop up a dialog saying "Enable? Yes | Cancel". Hitting "Cancel" immediately pops the dialog back up again, so you cannot use the app at all until you click "Yes". edit: Some…

Yeah, that should be grounds for expulsion from the Play Store if you ask me. It's clearly an abuse of the runtime permission system.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#279

Post by crummy »

username223 wrote: post #193
bottled_poe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just Amazon, I am constantly clicking through those unsubscribe links but just get auto-signed up for new lists. Fuck you Amazon and anyone else that does this. I'll buy your junk when and if I need to. Leave me alone and stop wasting my life.

Never click a spammer's "unsubscribe" links -- that just tells them they have a valid account. If you use a big email provider like gmail, flag them as spam. Otherwise, make a rule in your mail client to automatically file anything from their domain to the trash.

I don't think spammers care about the difference between an email they have and an email they have that clicked a link. They're going to spam both anyway.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#280

Post by tgb »

wingerlang wrote: post #230
tgb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one might be the best: https://copyhackers.com/2014/01/fallen-scuzzy-design-trend-p... (Note the content of the article, then move your mouse up to try to go to close the tab. Irony!)

Did you read the content yourself? They are saying that the "show before close" is a good thing, so what's the irony? Read the "Step Into The Light" section.

It's not the pop-up that's ironic per se, it's the phrasing of the "no" button.
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