It’s always the same story. You order something from a website, had your guard down, miss the purposefully easy-to miss button to refuse sharing your information with Shop.app and then BAM. On the next screen thanking you for your purchase you see a notification that says “We’ve saved your payment information with shop.app” and realized that you’ve been dark patterned into doing the online shopping equivalent of catching herpes.

Now they have your e-mail, your phone number, your address and your credit card information saved and easily accessible to anyone who hacks your e-mail or their databanks. You have to go to their website, log in with the credentials they stole from you and request for your account to be deleted. But if it took seconds to create the account, somehow it takes them 30 DAYS to delete the account. The dumb thing too is that there is no real way to tell if they truly deleted your account because if you try to log in they’ll ask you for your e-mail and phone number, which they will use to create a new account without your permission if didn’t exist before.

Those are blatant predatory practices and if it isn’t illegal, it absolutely should be. I really hope they get hit by a giant crippling class action lawsuit. Or a train, whichever happens first.

  • tyler@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    1 month ago

    I’m telling you this from a programmer perspective. That checkout screen you are seeing is Shop code, running on the webpage you’re using. It’s not code from whatever company you’re buying from. Shop is in control of it.

    In addition, you’re “signing up” with shop no matter what you do here. Shop needs all of your information to complete the transaction, and will continue to need it until months have passed and the company that is selling you the product has completed their taxes and whatnot.

    No matter what, shop will retain your information for a very long time. The only difference is whether or not you get an account to view that info, not whether they retain it.