See if any of this sounds familiar: You can’t find an easy way to cancel an unwanted subscription, so you let it continue for another month — telling yourself you’ll try again later. You feel rushed ...

Have you ever noticed how online accounts are incredibly easy to sign up for, but can be hair-pullingly difficult to close? Sometimes the Close Account option is right where you’d think it would be, ...

The term “dark patterns” may be new to you, but the experience certainly isn’t. You encounter dark patterns online every day: the confusing questions that get you to opt into invasive data collection; ...

Richard Whittle receives funding from the ESRC, Research England, and various industry sources including AJ Bell and the Money Advice Service. The research mentioned in this article was supported by ...

You’ve seen them before. Pop-ups with tiny X’s that make a window hard to close. Buttons and toggles in permissions boxes that are so confusing it’s difficult to understand what you’re agreeing to.

Since October of last year, Microsoft has been sending customers of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 desktop pop-ups, asking them to update to Windows 10 for free. About a month ago, users who had resisted ...

A large-scale academic study that analyzed more than 53,000 product pages on more than 11,000 online stores found widespread use of user interface "dark patterns"-- practices meant to mislead ...

See if any of this sounds familiar: You can't find an easy way to cancel an unwanted subscription, so you let it continue for another month — telling yourself you'll try again later. You feel rushed ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...