Good user experiences (UX) online make our daily choices—such as making a purchase or sharing our personal information with brands—abundantly clear, empowering us with respect and personal agency. On the other hand, dark patterns are generally understood to be user interface (UI) or UX tricks used by companies in their websites and apps to intentionally make someone take an action that they didn’t mean to, like buying an additional item or add-on or signing up for unwanted marketing emails.

The use of dark patterns in UX/UI has become so prevalent that earlier this year, legislators in California and Colorado finally stood up for consumer rights. Now, what has commonly been considered a design issue is, in fact, a legal issue for companies.