Here's one "dark pattern": Writing about a site and hiding the clickable link deep within the text of the post, in a way that the text of the link doesn't indicate that it actually takes you to the site, in the middle of a jungle of other links that take you to various other articles on the same blog.
I wouldn't call it dark pattern but rather an anti-pattern or just a plain-old mistake/oversight. Dark pattern implies the website gains something by misleading the user. In this case, the guy actually loses hits/viewer to the main website he is talking about. So it is more of a usability oversight than usability insidiousness.
This exact same thing happened to me while subscribing with www.1and1.fr for a 1 year free domain name + 100mb disk space.
At the end of the year, they started charging me, but I never noticed because the credit card I used when I subscribed was expired.
A few months later I got a letter from a bailiff (not sure of the translation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huissier_de_justice) saying that I owed like 100$ to 1and1, then I got another letter, and another, I never replied and the story stopped here.
For what it's worth, pretty much all major credit card companies impose conditions on merchants who want to have delayed or recurring payments, which form the financial basis for this sort of dubious behaviour.
As a result, if someone is trying to pull a fast one like this, you probably don't need heavyweight legal action to defend yourself. The payment authority on your card will have expired when your card did and chances are that the merchant is required by their card processing service to get a new authority for any further payments. If they didn't, and they didn't contact you immediately but let the "debt" run up for a few months, that's basically their problem, and neither the credit card services nor the courts are likely to give them much sympathy. Whoever they sent after you is probably well aware of this, and gave up as soon as they realised the situation, particularly if they're only receiving a percentage of any money recovered as their fee.
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, if you trust any legal comments you read on an Internet forum without independent verification then you're a fool, etc. :-)
Doesn't every MMORPG (World of Warcraft, etc.) violate this? You generally get your first month free, but still need to setup an account with recurring billing. If you don't cancel you start getting charged.
I guess usually you have to buy the box though so its not quite the same. Unless they offer the game free for download.
I don't know how WoW phrases it, but the promise "buy a subscription and get one month free" is not the same in the mind of the customer as the promise "free one-month trial". The first gives a more accurate description of what will happen to your credit card.
I think all of us have encountered examples like this.
I consider myself a fairly savvy user, but a few years ago, I was caught by geni.com's invite policy (it was endorsed by Time Magazine, so I trusted it more than I should have).
I entered the email addresses of a few family members, expecting them to be invited to join the family tree. Instead they were automatically opted in to a deluge of daily email updates about family activities/events. It made me fairly unpopular for a while at family gatherings, especially with older family members, who couldn't find the "unsubscribe" link. I think some of them still have to manually delete messages every day.
Its extremely rare to see an online store that includes all taxes & fees in its line item prices. Such as hotel/air tax, sales tax, or shipping costs.
And when I don't see them in the checkout, I get suspicious. Shipping is never free, please let me know what I'm paying for it rather than lumping it into 1 price.
What about fees only certain customers have to pay?
An example of this in the US is that companies don't know if you're going to pay their sales tax until they know what state you're in. Would they have to collect all required information before they display any products, (potentially being perceived as http://darkpatterns.org/forced-information-disclosure/) or display multiple prices?
In Sweden, the only real difference is between companies and persons, and the former don't pay VAT, but the latter group should. EU didn't complicate matters, you still pay VAT based on the country you buy from, not where you are located.
So if you make a print catalog and send it to companies, you can print prices without VAT. If you make the same and send to people, you have to include VAT. Same if you have a store, you have to include VAT in all prices.
Webshops usually have a simple global toggle somewhere on the site where you can choose to display prices with or without VAT.
In the US case, you could simply use GeoIP to guess the default and display all prices according to that state, and somewhere on the site have a "We think you are in <state>. Change?" and a dropdown.
It's really not rocket science, and the end result is very nice for consumers since the total you see is always the actual total, not a bullshit number that gets magically larger at the last step.
A "dark pattern" I know about is websites that make it extremely difficult to quit the service. Having to sift through a site design like a maze to find the "quit" button is definitely something that is manipulative and harmful to end users, since we are generally lazy, easily distracted individuals.
Zuckerpunch, n. A quick opening move that tricks you into compromising your privacy before you realise what's really happening. See also "Facebook, joining".
I was hoping to be inspired, but I don't actually see any new or useful information on this site. All of these entries just come across as whiny complaints about things that are very obvious and in the company's best interest.
Example: "Disguised Ads"
Site designers want ads to look like content?? God forbid! Stop the presses!
