CFPB chief Chopra says TransUnion is ‘out of control’ as regulator sues

> The CFPB said that TransUnion asked customers, who were seeking a free annual credit report the company is required to provide under federal law, to enter credit card information as part of what appeared to be an identity-verification process.

> The agency said the company then “integrated deceptive buttons” into its website that made customers think they could access their credit score for free, in addition to the free report.

> “In reality, clicking this button signed customers up for recurring monthly charges using the credit card information they had provided,” the CFPB said in a press release. “For consumers looking for a way out of their subscriptions, TransUnion not only failed to offer a simple mechanism for cancellation, it actively made it arduous for consumers to cancel through clever uses of font and color on its website.”

Wow, dark patterns to get people to sign up, then more dark patterns when they try to cancel.

I actually was a victim of this recently, and ended up unintentionally signing up for their $25/month subscription while attempting to create an account to freeze my credit with that bureau.

The subscription sign-up form is nearly identical in both theming and content to the free sign-up forms, and they can be easily mistaken for one another. TransUnion also does not use a singular identity provider shared between any of their free or paid services, meaning you must go through a sign-up form to create a unique account for each of them.

The TransUnion "Member Login" website also either partially or fully obscures the links to all three of their free services using a message banner on standard 1920x1080 desktop monitors https://www.transunion.com/customer-support/login (one of which was the "Freeze Credit" service I was looking for). There is also no "X" button to close this banner, meaning you must actually physically scroll the page to see these links. The only available links to click without scrolling the page are the ones that sign you up for a subscription.

The only other accessible page link that isn't obstructed by the banner is to the Credit Monitoring $25/month subscription sign-up page https://membership.tui.transunion.com/tucm/orderStep1_form.p...?. This user sign-up form lists the "You have chosen Credit Monitoring ... $25/month subscription" over halfway down the page on the right side, which at that point in using the webpage an average user (including me) would have been already several form fields into the process of filling out the signup information and are no longer reading things anymore on the right sidebar. If this page actually intended to convey this information as one of the first things a user should know on this page, this subscription information and what it offers should be at the top so it can be scanned before beginning to fill out information. At the end of this subscription process, I also did not see a single easily-discernible confirmation dialogue box or button such as "Confirm subscription" informing me that I was actually signing up for a subscription as well as an account.