Dark patterns under scrutiny: Why digital trust must be designed into consumer journeys

India’s digital economy has changed the way consumers discover, compare, and buy products and services. Websites and applications are built to make that journeys faster, more personalised, and convenient. However, the same design choices that make a journey convenient can also influence consumers to take decisions they may not have otherwise intended to take.

These practices are commonly known as ‘dark patterns.’ They may include additional charges disclosed late in a transaction, pre-selected options, artificial scarcity messages, emotionally framed choices, difficult cancellation processes, design elements that make one option significantly more prominent than another among others.

Dark patterns are no longer only a matter of user-experience (UX) ethics. They are now attracting regulatory attention. For organisations in sectors, such as e-commerce, travel, financial services, insurance, consumer goods, media, healthcare, technology, etc., this makes fair digital designs a business issue, not only a compliance issue. Recent action by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) against many digital platforms has led to regulatory penalties and directions to correct practices considered deceptive. It also signals that regulators are closely looking at how digital interfaces influence consumer choices and behaviour. This affects customer’s perception of a brand and could lead to reputational damage for an organisation.


When digital convenience becomes manipulation

Digital platforms often use prompts, recommendations, and personalised messages to help consumers navigate large amounts of information. These features are not a concern by themselves. Concern arises when a design hides important information, assumes consent, creates a false sense of urgency or makes it harder for consumers to decline an option, cancel a service, return to an earlier step or make an informed choice.

The Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023, define dark patterns as deceptive design practices that use user-interface (UI) or user-experience interactions to mislead users into doing something they did not originally intend or want to do. In simple terms, the issue is not only what the platform says, but also how the screen, flow, or choice architecture encourages the user to act.

The guidelines apply to platforms offering goods or services in India, as well as advertisers and sellers. There are 13 guidelines under specified categories: false urgency, basket sneaking, confirm shaming, forced action, subscription traps, interface interference, bait and switch, drip pricing, disguised advertisements, nagging, trick questions, Software-as-a-Service billing, and rogue malware.

Several of these categories can look like regular features of an online journey. False urgency may show unsupported claims about limited stock or an offer ending soon. Basket sneaking involves adding a product or service without clear consent. Confirm shaming uses language that may make a consumer feel guilty or worried about declining an option. Interface interference can make one option stand out while making another difficult to notice. Drip pricing reveals additional price elements step by step instead of showing the full payable amount upfront.

Enforcement is redefining digital responsibility

Recent regulatory action shows that authorities are looking at the actual consumer journey, not only at the terms and conditions displayed on a platform. Publicly available enforcement actions and regulatory communications have pointed to concerns such as pre-selected options, confirm-shaming messages, and requests for personal information before accessing services described as free. It has also clarified that consent should not be assumed through default selections; it should come through clear and affirmative action.

This is an important shift. Digital design can no longer be seen only as a marketing, product, or technology decision. If a journey nudges consumers unfairly, it may create legal, compliance, and reputational risks for the wider organisation, while also affecting how customers perceive the brand and its commitment to fair dealing.

Dark-pattern risk, therefore, should be treated as a governance issue. It may sit across pricing rules, promotional content, subscription flows, payment settings, consent mechanisms, application code and third-party tools.

Why traditional reviews may not be sufficient

A review of policies, disclaimers, or terms and conditions may not identify every dark pattern violation. Some concerns become visible only when a consumer moves through the full journey—from sign-up to checkout or cancellation. Others may come from the platform’s code or backend rules, rather than from the words shown on the first screen.

Screenshot-based analysis can help identify visible issues, such as pre-selected boxes, unclear disclosures, misleading prompts, and uneven presentation of choices. Repository or source-code analysis may help detect settings linked to default choices, artificial urgency, unclear consent or cancellation journeys that require too many steps.

Analysis of Application Programming Interface (API) requests, responses, and transmitted payloads may also reveal concerns driven by the backend of the platform selling products or services. These could include additional charges added during checkout, price changes across stages of an order, or default recurring-billing settings that may not be obvious in a static review.

The key point is that no single review is likely to provide complete visibility. Interface testing, code review, and backend analysis each examine a different part of the same digital risk.

Building trust in digital design

Dark patterns may sometimes support short-term business outcomes, such as higher transaction values, fewer opt-outs, or longer subscription periods. However, these gains need to be weighed against the risk of consumer complaints, regulatory directions, penalties, changes in customer brand perception, and reputational damage that may occur if such practices are identified.

Organisations may, therefore, need to shift from one-time correction to continuous review. This starts with mapping the full digital environment, including websites, applications, pricing structures, advertisements, subscription models, and consent mechanisms.

Automated analysis can help review large and frequently changing digital environments. However, human judgement remains important to understand the context, separate genuine concerns from false positives and assess the possible effect on consumer choice. Evidence such as screenshots and journey-level observations can also support a more consistent review.

India’s regulatory direction is becoming clearer: consumer choice should be genuine, consent should be affirmative, and important information should be easy to understand before a decision is made. As scrutiny increases, compliance will depend not only on what organisations state in their policies, but also on what their digital systems make simple, difficult, visible or hidden.

Responsible design does not need to reduce convenience or innovation. A digital journey that explains costs clearly, presents choices fairly, and respects the consumer’s decision can help build the trust on which sustainable digital relationships depend.

The author is a Partner-Risk Advisory, KPMG in India. Views are personal.