ACM publishes for consultation the draft guidelines on the protection of online consumers

The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has drawn up a draft version of its Guidelines on the Protection of Online Consumers. In these guidelines, ACM explains how it will apply consumer protection rules to common persuasion techniques in online choice architectures.

Consumers must be able to make informed decisions about any transaction with businesses. Whether they are actually able to do so strongly depends on the way businesses present their products, services, and choices to consumers. ACM sees that businesses that are active in the online economy take advantage of behavioral insights when designing their online choice architectures. The actual design influences how consumers make their choices. In its Guidelines, ACM marks the boundaries, based on consumer protection rules, when it comes to persuasion techniques targeting consumers. It does so using practical examples and explanations.

Would you like to respond?

ACM invites everyone to respond to the draft version of its Guidelines. Our questions are:

• Do you find the explanations in the Guidelines to be clear and useful?
• Do you have any suggestions for improvement?
• Do you have any suggestions for additions, for example, adding new examples.

Please submit your responses no later than January 16, 2020, by sending an email to beslisonline [at] acm [punt] nl (beslisonline[at]acm[dot]nl). ACM will subsequently finalize the Guidelines. ACM expects to publish the final version of the Guidelines in February 2020.