It’s time to end damaging website design practices that may harm your users

Summary

A joint paper by the ICO and CMA urges web designers and developers to avoid using harmful design practices that can undermine users' control over their personal information and lead to worse consumer and competition outcomes. The paper highlights that certain design practices can breach data protection law and raises concerns from a consumer and competition law perspective. Specifically, the ICO will be assessing cookie consent banners on frequently used UK websites and taking action where harmful design is affecting consumers. The paper advises designers to put users at the heart of design choices, use design that empowers user choice and control, test and trial design choices, and comply with data protection, consumer, and competition law. If harmful design practices are not improved, enforcement action will be taken to protect people's data protection rights.