People signing up for fundraising races and other events were allegedly duped into enrolling in a third-party event registration platform’s $89.95-a-year “discount membership club,” helping the company generate $300 million in membership fees, according to a lawsuit filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week.
That webpage included a highlighted “accept” button and gray “no thanks” button alongside an advertisement for the discount club and the consumer’s address and billing information. “The CFPB is suing ACTIVE Network for illegally charging hundreds of millions of dollars in enrollment fees through its use of digital dark patterns and online trickery,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement Tuesday.
“The Active Advantage product, the target of today’s action, has been reviewed by multiple federal and state regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission,” the spokesperson said. Some follow-up emails advertising the club allegedly included “small-print instructions on how to ‘modify’ or cancel the membership,” the lawsuit alleges, but only about 26% of billed consumers opened those emails, anyway.