전자상거래에서 다크 패턴과 소비자보호에 관한 연구

The e-commerce market is rapidly developing, but cases of exploiting it are also emerging. Among them, the dark pattern is an act that interferes with consumers’ exercise of reasonable options by using deception, and the method that has existed since before is developing in a more evolved form. Therefore, many national and international organizations, including Korea, recognize the seriousness of the dark pattern and are making efforts to regulate it. In this paper, I looked at the types and examples of dark patterns based on the report of the Korea Consumer Agency. However, although not all of the presented actions correspond to dark patterns that violate consumers’ rational choices, some actions are judged to correspond to this. In addition, there are cases where such acts can be sufficiently regulated by the current law, but there are cases where it is difficult to regulate some acts by the current law. Therefore, it is necessary to protect consumer rights and interests through appropriate regulations, along with continuous monitoring of dark patterns that hinder consumers’ exercise of options and disrupt market order, and to create a foundation for e-commerce to grow. In addition, what should be considered by regulators or legislators in regulating dark patterns is that public regulations alone do not sufficiently relieve consumer damage. Therefore, legislative agencies, etc. should prepare measures to effectively prevent and relieve consumer damage by adopting a method of imposing public regulations based on private regulations in regulating acts that fall under the dark pattern.