1 week ago
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May 9, 2026 — 5:15am
The only financial game in town right now is cutting your costs. But you will never do so effectively if you’re not across the “dark patterns” that subtly influence your spending.
Forget straight-up digital marketing and targeting; dark patterns are sinister techniques online retailers use to manipulate consumers into parting with money they didn’t intend. Beneath the broad term lies a bunch of powerful psychological strategies designed to entice, coerce and even panic you into purchasing.
Indeed, they have become so pervasive online, even from reputable companies, that there is a current bill to amend Competition and Consumer Law to make it clear that businesses “must not manipulate consumers or unreasonably distort the environment in which consumers make or are likely to make decisions and in ways that are going to try and cause those consumers detriment”.
Because while there are some protections in place under the law in terms of misleading and deceptive conduct, there is nothing to prevent more insidious techniques. You will no doubt recognise strategies such as this:
- “Huge never-before-seen discounts” – bagging a bargain gives us a hit of a brain hormone called dopamine, which is seductive and also addictive.
- “Only two left”, when there are likely thousands. This is usually layered on top of a discount to pressure you into making an immediate purchase rather than giving you the chance to wait and think better of it.
- The countdown at the top of the screen, maybe saying you only have 30 seconds left to buy the product, or it/the discount disappears forever – again, engineering panic purchasing.
- Gamified shopping, which you see particularly with overseas mass-market retailers. You “spin this” or “roll that” to qualify for a percentage off your whole shopping cart or sometimes even specific free items. If you stick with it, you will find there are extreme qualifying conditions, but you’ve already been shown and possibly taken a shine to said items – and might buy more.
Often, dark patterns constitute false advertising, but that’s difficult to prove. Having said that, the Federal Court has recently fined online mattress and bedding company Emma Sleep $15 million for exactly this.
The penalty is for false or misleading online sale representations over the course of three years, between 2020 and 2023. But the form this took was enormous discounts that, when you clicked through to buy, were subject to a countdown of the sale’s imminent end.
But in fact, out of 74 products, 58 had never been above the discounted price. The “original” price had never been charged.
The good thing is that if you are aware of all the pervasive applications of dark patterns, it is easier to resist them. But better still – in the name of saving money – is to avoid being subjected to them. Here are some recent steps I’ve taken to reduce my online targeting.
Unsubscribe en masse. My email inbox had become absolutely jammed with marketing spam – you know, from basically everything I’ve ever bought – so I devoted some time to hitting the “unsubscribe” link on everything. Sometimes it’s a multi-step process, but it’s worth it.
The option to instantly use a card that is saved on your phone, say with Apple Pay, lubricates spending that little bit too much.
Use a browser that won’t track you. For the same reason as above – your probably rich online purchasing history – what you are served up online (or on social media) is a rich tapestry of your personal penchants.
You’ve been comprehensively mapped and tracked for a long time now. And deals and discount on things you actually want are incredibly difficult to resist. Use Google? If you haven’t turned off permissions, it is analysing your every search to serve you with “personalised ads”.
A browser called Brave has no ads. What’s more, a search engine called DuckDuckGo is its default and won’t remember your searches either.
Demote social media ads. If you are clicking on any link presented to you not only via email or message right now, but in a sponsored social media post, then you’re living dangerously.
There has been a dramatic rise – prompting an ACCC warning – about online ghost stores, ones that don’t really exist.
Typically, ads for such stores will use all the emotional tricks in the conversion book, including creating a sense of urgency that a much-loved actual-and-known brand may be sadly closing down … and, again, you have a very limited time to snare an extreme bargain.
You can also, to an extent, control what you are served up. It depends on the platform, but each has a mechanism to either block or minimise ads for particular products or product types. For example, three dots appear at the right-hand side of ads on Facebook, that let you “hide” or “see less” of such ads in future.
Avoid “click to pay”. The option to instantly use a card that is saved on your phone, say with Apple Pay, lubricates spending that little bit too much.
There is no cause for spending “pause”, which completely (what behavioural finance experts call) “decouples” the purchase from payment pain. And that’s even more so than just physically reaching for a credit card.
A better approach – always – is to put what you think you want in your shopping cart and then just delay, as policy. Wait a day, go back to the store and purchase what you now deem sensible to buy. Or don’t.
Because our shopping desires on a platter along with dark patterns make for heady spending temptation.
Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon is the author of How to Get Mortgage-Free Like Me, available at nicolessmartmoney.com. Follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.
- Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.
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