CCPA's Dark Patterns Decision: What It Means for Digital Businesses and Sign Up Flows

The Central Consumer Protection Authority ("CCPA") passed an order against PhysicsWallah ("PW") examining whether its checkout flow and course access practices violated the Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023. Among the findings, the CCPA held that PW's practice of conditioning access to "free" courses on mandatory registration amounted to a misleading advertisement and a prohibited "forced action" dark pattern.

While the order was passed under consumer protection law, it offers a useful lens for assessing data collection practices under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, particularly the requirement that consent be "unconditional" under Section 6. The CCPA's reasoning, and its parallel to Article 7(4) of the GDPR, gives businesses a workable test for when bundling data collection with service access becomes legally risky.

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