Report a
Dark Pattern

Notice a website or app up to something suspicious? Maybe you’ve felt forced into giving up personal details or discovered hidden fees. Document and share your experience to help prevent other people from also being harmed.

Sharing a dark pattern you spotted in the wild helps us learn more about interfaces and designs that impact real people. Your tips will help policymakers and enforcers hold companies accountable for their dishonest and harmful practices, and we may feature your submission on this site. Join the movement to call out corporations for taking what’s not theirs.

We encourage uploading images or screenshots that show the dark pattern you’ve encountered. Please don’t include any personal information in your submission. We review all submissions prior to publishing them on the website, and may opt to not publish your submission due to quality or clarity issues, or if your submission duplicates an existing published dark pattern on our site.

Important note: The Dark Patterns Tip Line does not provide legal help. Reporting a dark pattern here helps raise public awareness and contributes to a list of examples for policymakers, enforcers and researchers. If you find a dark pattern that you believe violates the law, you can file a complaint with your state Attorney General (AG) who enforces consumer protection statutes against unfair, misleading, and deceptive acts and practices.

Report here

The company, platform, product or service that you noticed doing shady stuff.

Please explain what you experienced and what harm it caused you. If possible, please explain how we can try to recreate your experience.

Where should we go to try and recreate your experience?

Select industry...

Choose from the most commonly effected industries.

Select category...

Choose from the categories of harms.

Drag & Drop your file here
Or browse files on your device

If you don’t have an image, that’s OK.

You can optionally share your email so we can reach out if we have any questions. We won’t share your email. Please do not provide your email address if you are under 16 years of age.

By submitting this form, I agree to the terms of Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab’s Data Use Policy.
Read more about how we'll use your submissions.