Designed to deceive: how manipulative design in privacy policies affects transparency and user rights

This project will investigate the use of deceptive and manipulative design (also calleddark patterns) in privacy policy notices of websites, and how they affect the concrete implementation of the transparency principle enshrined in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
We will look at how deceptive design interacts with the principle of transparency under the GDPR from a legal perspective, specifically with the concrete forms in which the right of information is implemented, and their compatibility with the GDPR in general. The project will also develop a technical tool to analyse privacy policies and “benchmark” deceptive design techniques across different data controller sectors (e.g., social networks, internet banking, newspapers).