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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.

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

Please do not 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.
1. Describe the design pattern and the type of harm you experienced:

Choose from the categories of harms.

 

Please explain your experience and what harm it caused you. How and where did you encounter this dark pattern? What was frustrating about the experience? What problems did it cause you?

2. Upload screenshots:
Please upload up to four screenshots of the pattern. We STRONGLY RECOMMEND that you do this so that we can verify your report. We cannot always recreate your individual experience and appreciate your input as evidence. Please select files in the order in which you want them to appear. (Maximum combined file size 5mb)
3. Tell us who used this pattern, where to find it, and the type of business or service:
(Required)
 

The company, platform, product or service that you noticed doing shady stuff. Start typing the company name; if we already have a report about that company, you can select it from the list that will appear.

 

The product associated with the dark pattern (if applicable).

 

Where should we go to try and recreate your experience?

Choose from the most commonly effected industries.

4. Optional: Please provide an email contact if you want us to follow up with you:
 

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.