Extract from Benjamin Joyner’s article “IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2025: ‘Dark Patterns’ Aren’t so Black and White”
At the IAPP Global Privacy Summit’s morning session “‘Deceptive Design—Reducing Harms Through Public Awareness,” experts addressed the impact of a set of techniques collectively deemed deceptive design practices, also known as dark patterns.
These practices are used to steer users toward making decisions not in their own best interest by making it more difficult to make choices around personal data.
Much of the panel focused on the findings of the Global Privacy Enforcement Network’s recent annual “sweep,” which this year involved 53 privacy and consumer protection authorities examining websites for deceptive practices around the collection of user data. The sweep confirmed that deceptive design practices are ubiquitous on the consumer-facing internet.
Per the study, 97% of websites examined exhibited at least one deceptive design practice, with confusing and complex language by far the most common; 76% of privacy policies required at least a university-level education to understand, and more than half (55%) were over 3,000 words long. In addition, 43% of websites imposed interface interference, and 39% compelled users to go through unnecessary steps.
