Adeyoju on Privacy Dark Patterns

Ademola Adeyoju (FIP | CIPP/E,CIPP/C,CIPM University of Saskatchewan) has posted Privacy Dark Patterns: A Case for Regulatory Reform in Canada on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

By 2023, nearly 90 percent of the Canadian population or about 35 million people will have access to the internet. Increased access to the internet also means that more people are having to constantly share their personal information (i.e., location data, IP address, financial and health data) with companies all the time. To help people maintain control over how, when, and to whom they disclose their personal information—and govern how companies collect, use, and disclose personal information—a number federal and provincial privacy laws exist across Canada. However, due to lack of technical and procedural clarity in current laws and the inherent weaknesses of the knowledge-and-consent architecture upon which these laws are built, companies are finding novel ways to undermine the central objectives of the laws and prevent people from making informed decisions by subverting their autonomy through privacy dark patterns. Privacy dark patterns are problematic design patterns or elements on website and mobile applications that trick, manipulate, or coerce people into giving away personal information they would rather keep. As they enable the invasion of privacy in subtle but unprecedented ways, privacy dark patterns have stimulated serious conversations in recent years in jurisdictions such as Europe and the United States, and led to the adoption of new legislative measures. However, despite the move to shield the fundamental essence of privacy laws from being violated by dark patterns in other jurisdictions, nothing seems to be happening in Canada yet, even as privacy concerns among Canadians grow. In fact, as of the time of writing this paper, there does not seem to be any publicly available academic, legal, or policy document specifically addressing the issue of privacy dark patterns in relation to how they affect Canadians’ right to privacy. At the very least, therefore, this paper hopes to: (x) raise awareness on the relatively novel threats that dark patterns pose to privacy by taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines insights from behavioural economy, product design, and law; and (y) propose policy and regulatory recommendations that can help combat the proliferation and use of privacy dark patterns in Canada.