Those same design patterns that designers use to make things easy for visitors can be flipped around to trick visitors resulting in profits for the companies that employ them. Harry Brignull goes over some of these “Dark Patterns” in his talk at UX Brighton 2010. He also runs the site darkpatterns.org to catalog various common types of Dark Pattern, and to name and shame organizations that use them.

See https://www.slideshare.net/harrybr/ux-brighton-dark-patterns?next_slideshow=true

(via Engadget)