Dark patterns are design elements that are meant to hide, mislead, coerce, and/or deceive website visitors into making choices that could be bad for them.

They can be found at many places and used by a lot of different industries. They come in the form of buttons that don't say what they say, choices that are hard to undo, and graphical elements like color and shading that direct users' attention to or away from certain choices.

Customers are dissatisfied and lose faith in a company when they see dark patterns in their interactions. The customer experience, according to PwC, was cited as one of the most important aspects in their purchase choice by a large majority of customers. Dark patterns are associated with a negative client experience. Customers that have a negative customer experience are less likely to return.