My Own Sister Who Has Used The Internet For Years And Yet She Fell For A Common Scam.

A screen came up that told her her computer had a virus.

She couldn't close the screen no matter what she did.

There was a phone number she was told to call to get help with the virus on that screen shot.

Yup! She like a dummy called the number.

She talked on the phone and they worked her for two hours "trying to repair her computer."

Then they made an appointment to call her back on Sunday to try again, at which time she was told to send some money somewhere in Texas to someone who was the expert pro at fixing such things. 

I couldn't believe it when she told me about it.

All of us get scammed on the net now and then without even being aware of it.

Harry Brignell has posted a 30-minute video documenting dark patterns, deliberately confusing or deceptive user interfaces (not exclusive to the internet) that trick users into setting up recurring payments, purchasing items added to a shopping cart, or spamming all contacts through pre-checked forms on Facebook games for example.

Think about those Java and flash updates with little pre check boxes saying you also want to install Yahoo as your home page or some other thing that you don't really want like the ASk tool bar.

If your not paying attention during the update you get the crap being pushed on you inadvertently.

 Basically, they're tactics used by online services to get users to do things they wouldn't normally do.

 Yael Grauer has written an in-depth report on Ars Technica about dark patterns, where he discusses Brignull's work with UX designers and business executives: 

"Klein [Principal at Users Known and author of UX for Lean Startups] believes many of the worst dark patterns are pushed by businesses, not by designers. 

'It's often pro-business at the expense of the users, and the designers often see themselves as the defender or advocate of the user,' she explained. 

And although Brignull has never been explicitly asked to design dark patterns himself, he said he has been in situations where using them would be an easy solution -- like when a client or boss says they really need a large list of people who have opted in to marketing e-mails.

 'The first and easiest trick to have an opt-in is to have a pre-ticked checkbox, but then you can just get rid of that entirely and hide it in the terms of conditions and say that by registering you're going to be opted in to our e-mails,' Brignull said.

 'Then you have a 100-percent sign-up rate and you've exceeded your goals.

 I kind of understand why people do it. If you're only thinking about the numbers and you're just trying to juice the stats, then it's not surprising in the slightest.' 

'There's this logical positivist mindset that the only things that have value are those things that can be measured and can empirically be shown to be true, and while that has its merits it also takes us down a pretty dark place,' said digital product designer Cennydd Bowles, who is researching ethical design. 

'We start to look at ethics as pure utilitarianism, whatever benefits the most people. 

Yikes, it has problems.'"

 Brignull's website has a number of examples of deliberately confusing or deceptive user interfaces.