Die Studie „DECEIVED BY DESIGN – How tech companies use dark patterns to discourage us from exercising our rights to privacy“ untersucht zum ersten Mal, wie Technologieunternehmen „böse“ Entwurfsmuster (dark patterns) verwenden, um uns davon abzuhalten, unsere Rechte auf Privatsphäre wahrzunehmen. Die Studie umfasst insgesamt 44 Seiten und stammt von der Norwegian Consumer Council – sozusagen dem Norwegischen Verbraucherschutz.

Ein Auszug:

In this report, we analyze a sample of settings in Facebook, Google and Windows 10, and show how default settings and dark patterns, techniques and features of interface design meant to manipulate users, are used to nudge users towards privacy intrusive options. The findings include privacy intrusive default settings, misleading wording, giving users an illusion of control, hiding away privacy friendly choices, take-it-or-leave-it choices, and choice architectures where choosing the privacy friendly option requires more effort for the users.

Facebook and Google have privacy intrusive defaults, where users who want the privacy friendly option have to go through a significantly longer process. They even obscure some of these settings so that the user cannot know that the more privacy intrusive option was preselected.

The combination of privacy intrusive defaults and the use of dark patterns, nudge users of Facebook and Google, and to a lesser degree Windows 10, toward the least privacy friendly options to a degree that we consider unethical. We question whether this is in accordance with the principles of data protection by default and data protection by design, and if consent given under these circumstances can be said to be explicit, informed and freely given.

Liest man die gesamte Studie, so wird einem schnell deutlich, dass Google, Facebook und Microsoft sich also die größte Mühe geben Kontrolle vorzutäuschen, Einstellungen zu verstecken, diese missverständlich darzustellen oder den Nutzer mit irreführenden Formulierungen vom Schutz seiner Privatsphäre abzuhalten.

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