Amazon Accused of Tricking Customers with Subscriptions

The US watchdog, Federal Trade Commission (FTC),  claims that Amazon's website designs were "manipulative" and made it too easy for customers to unknowingly sign up for Prime and automatically renew their subscriptions.  while also making it difficult to unsubscribe once signed up. These are called “dark patterns” in web design - easy to spend, hard to cancel. 

FTC alleges that Amazon has trapped people into subscriptions without their knowledge, costing them money and frustration.  Amazon has made it difficult for users to cancel their subscriptions because it would hurt the company's profits. These strategies are called “dark patterns” in web design - easy to spend, hard to cancel. 

Amazon denies these accusations, but the FTC is seeking a court order to force Amazon to change its practices and financial penalties. 

This is the third action taken by the FTC against Amazon in recent weeks, Amazon agreed to pay $25m last month to settle charges it had violated child privacy laws by keeping recordings children made on Alexa. It agreed to pay another $5.8m to resolve claims that Ring, the doorbell company Amazon purchased in 2018, had violated privacy protections by giving staff unrestricted access to customer videos and failing to implement precautions against hackers.

- CyberBeat