Privacy Alerts, September 2024

Deceptive Design Patterns Guide

Welcome to the September 2024 edition of Privacy Alerts! We're excited to announce the re-launch of the Privacy Alerts newsletter. Originally launched in November 2022, Privacy Alerts began as an experimental effort to support our work at Conscious Digital, the nonprofit behind YourDigitalRights.org, while helping individuals improve their online privacy over time.

Initially, the focus was on specific companies with poor privacy practices that we recommended opting out of. However, we soon realized this approach was too narrow, and there is much more we’d like to share with you.

Moving forward, Privacy Alerts will guide you on actions to take to stay ahead of online threats and better control your personal data. We’ll offer expert advice, tips, and strategies to protect your digital privacy. This may still include recommendations to opt out of certain companies, but will also cover broader advice such as new privacy-preserving technologies, tools, and services, or important privacy-related settings in commonly used software.

We're also re-launching the paid version of the newsletter, which will focus on urgent issues that require immediate action to protect your privacy. While the free version will provide occasional updates, the paid version will cover critical events like major data breaches or instances where companies pose an immediate and significant threat to your privacy.

If you value your privacy in an ever-changing digital world you can subscribe to the paid version here:

If you prefer to stay subscribed to the free version, please consider donating to ensure our long-term financial stability and independence:

Free Guide

Today we’d like to share a guide we recently published titled How Deceptive Design is Used to Compromise Your Privacy and How to Fight Back. The guide covers 10 deceptive design patterns that threaten data protection, along with strategies to counter them. It focuses on tactics companies use to undermine data protection requests, such as those for data deletion or access.

Deceptive design, also known as "dark patterns," manipulates individuals into taking actions they wouldn't normally choose—like signing up for more expensive services, only to downgrade later. These manipulative techniques are often used by companies to sidestep data protection requests, which are legal rights that allow individuals to control their personal data.

You can learn more about this research further on our website. We hope you find the guide helpful!

Product Update

We have been working hard on adding additional countries and regulations to YourDigitslRights.org. These include Texas, Oregon, Florida, India, and Switzerland.

We are also looking for volunteer software engineers with the following skills: Machine Learning, React, and AWS. Please contact us if you would like to help us improve the platform.

As always, we appreciate your feedback in any form. If you have any suggestions or requests please email us, or leave a comment.

Yoav
Founder, Conscious Digital // YourDigitalRights.org