Stopping Harmful Website Design Practices for the Benefit of Consumers

The ICO and CMA are working together to combat harmful design practices that can negatively impact consumers' lives and privacy, such as overly complicated privacy controls, default settings that give less control over personal information and the bundling of privacy choices together in ways that encourage consumers to share more data than they would otherwise wish to do. These practices have been prevalent for a long time, often encoded into thousands of UK websites. They can lead to harmful outcomes, such as gamblers being exposed to betting adverts if they accept all 'cookies'. The two organisations want to raise awareness of these issues and help consumers choose which websites they frequent, as well as warning businesses against implementing deliberately unfair or dishonest web designs.