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I’m sure you meant your question sincerely. FWIW, I have backed out of many signup forms, and often wondered/worried whether they were doing exactly what the OP

by dahart 5y ago

I’m sure you meant your question sincerely. FWIW, I have backed out of many signup forms, and often wondered/worried whether they were doing exactly what the OP talked about. The reason for back-outs is because there is another very common dark pattern this gets combined with: a multi-page signup where email is asked for early, and then something more onerous is requested on a later page, which is where the cancellation is much more likely to occur. The single biggest reason in my experience for late cancellation is when the signup asked for a credit card, even though the signup was advertised as free. It’s a bait and switch, and the deal ends up being a subscription that you can cancel after your first free day/week/month. I’ve had other things besides credit cards, though, like required personal information.

eloff 5y ago
Yes, I can see your point. If you click through to the next step though, you should assume that submitted the form. Regardless of whether it was done through an old school POST or Ajax in a single page app. I think it's still a dark pattern to email someone who hasn't expressed interest in receiving those emails. There should at least be text informing you of that and giving a way to opt out up front.
- dahart 5y ago
  Yeah, exactly, it’s about expressing interest, communicating intent, and offering a way to opt out. The broader point is that form submission is not the criteria for saving an email address at all, explicit consent from the user is. When the site itself provides an expectation that a signup process can be “cancelled” they are signaling an expectation that the information will be discarded and not used to market to you or sell your email address to other companies. When they do that despite having communicated to you that the process was cancelled, they’re playing dirty. And I do think selling the email address to third parties is the bigger danger here, not getting a couple of direct marketing emails from site you visited.

by dahart 5y ago

eloff 5y ago

Yes, I can see your point. If you click through to the next step though, you should assume that submitted the form. Regardless of whether it was done through an old school POST or Ajax in a single page app. I think it's still a dark pattern to email someone who hasn't expressed interest in receiving those emails. There should at least be text informing you of that and giving a way to opt out up front.

dahart 5y ago
Yeah, exactly, it’s about expressing interest, communicating intent, and offering a way to opt out. The broader point is that form submission is not the criteria for saving an email address at all, explicit consent from the user is. When the site itself provides an expectation that a signup process can be “cancelled” they are signaling an expectation that the information will be discarded and not used to market to you or sell your email address to other companies. When they do that despite having communicated to you that the process was cancelled, they’re playing dirty. And I do think selling the email address to third parties is the bigger danger here, not getting a couple of direct marketing emails from site you visited.