Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story<\/p>\n
Emilia Rybak just wanted to register to vote.<\/p>\n
Last fall, Rybak was changing her residency from New York to Florida, and the first step in the long slog of forms and paperwork was a seemingly easy one: the United States Postal Service\u2019s Movers Guide website.<\/p>\n
Like tens of millions of Americans each year, Rybak navigated to the site, filled out a simple form with her old and new addresses, paid the $1.25 identity verification fee, and then checked a box indicating that she also wanted to update her voter registration.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI was like, this is definitely the kind of thing that I'm gonna put off or forget about until it's voting time and I'm gonna be scrambling to do it,\u201d Rybak says. \u201cThis is a perfectly timed option. And why not just do it now through the USPS?\u201d<\/p>\n
But when Rybak, who runs a user behavior research consultancy, clicked a button to continue updating her voter registration, she didn\u2019t see anything about voting. Instead, she was redirected to a new website, with the USPS logo in the bottom corner, that forced her to click on a series of unskippable advertisements. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be a [user experience] professional to go through this flow and see that it\u2019s highly unethical,\u201d Rybak says.<\/p>\n
For more than 30 years, one company, now called MyMove, has held an exclusive contract to run USPS\u2019s change-of-address and voter registration service. The government doesn\u2019t spend a dime on it. Instead, advertisers pay MyMove for the privilege of stuffing movers\u2019 mailboxes and inboxes with spam\u2014or deals, depending on your perspective\u2014and MyMove splits the profits with USPS. Or at least, they\u2019re supposed to.<\/p>\n
This public-private partnership, born when the internet was still fetal, was once hailed by then vice president Al Gore as a shining example of government innovation. But it has morphed into a government-sanctioned pitfall that, experts and users allege, employs deceptive and potentially illegal design practices. These techniques, which experts often refer to as \u201cdark patterns,\u201d block users from completing their intended goals and manipulate them into clicking buttons, giving away personal information and entering into agreements they don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n
The MyMove-USPS partnership has persisted despite MyMove and its parent company, Red Ventures, paying $2.75 million in 2023 to settle a whistleblower allegation that they defrauded the USPS. (There was no determination of liability as a result of the settlement.) And the most frustrating aspects of the voter registration website have remained for years, despite a steady stream of online user reviews that claim MyMove is \u201ca middle-man scam made to steal your info,\u201d \u201cuseless enshitification of USPS,\u201d and \u201cone of the worst experiences I have come across. It\u2019s straight up predatory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rybak, who filed a complaint with the USPS Inspector General after her attempt to register to vote, documented her experience in screenshots and notes. WIRED reviewed a similar, although not identical, workflow when independently completing the MyMove voter registration process.<\/p>\n
\u201cMyMove is employing a pretty egregious cocktail of dark patterns,\u201d says Lior Strahilevitz, a University of Chicago Law School professor, whose research has shown that aggressive dark patterns can quadruple the rate at which customers sign up for services they don\u2019t actually want. \u201cIt\u2019s not the worst I\u2019ve ever seen, but an entity that\u2019s partnering with the federal government shouldn\u2019t be using so many manipulative sales tactics and compromising citizen privacy in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former high-ranking official with the Federal Trade Commission, who requested anonymity because their current employer hadn\u2019t authorized them to speak on the matter, described MyMove\u2019s website as \u201cdeeply problematic\u201d and had concerns about whether the current user interface might put the company at risk for regulatory action.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s inherently confusing the way they\u2019re presenting the choices\u2014and it\u2019s easily fixable, but there\u2019s a lot of money at stake here,\u201d the former regulator says.<\/p>\n
In a statement, USPS noted that it processes 24 million change-of-address requests every year and that movers have alternative options, besides the MyMove website, to record their new address and register to vote. The agency said it is \u201caware of some customer discontent with the MyMove website. We take customer feedback seriously, and we are actively working with MyMove to increase transparency and enhance the customer experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immediately after completing her change-of-address form on the official USPS website, Rybak was shown a screen that said, \u201cNext, begin updating your Voter Registration.\u201d The page provided a checkbox Rybak could click to pre-populate the voter registration form with the information she\u2019d just provided USPS. In small, light gray text next to the checkbox, a disclaimer warned that by clicking the box Rybak agreed that a copy of her personal contact information would be transferred to MyMove. In small text at the bottom of the page, another disclaimer warned that once she was redirected to MyMove, she would be subject to MyMove\u2019s privacy policies and terms and conditions, not USPS\u2019s.<\/p>\n
When she clicked continue and arrived at the MyMove website, Rybak didn\u2019t see anything about registering to vote. The first page she encountered said, \u201cNext, set up your internet in minutes.\u201d The only available buttons were labeled \u201cKeep my current service,\u201d \u201cSet up new service,\u201d or \u201cGet Deals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rybak didn\u2019t want to click any of them, but she chose what seemed the lesser evil: \u201cKeep my current service.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next screen informed her that Xfinity was available in her new city and presented her with three different Xfinity plans. The only choices she had on the page were to select one of the plans, choose between a 1-year or 5-year plan, \u201cCompare Providers,\u201d or if she already had internet service, she could \u201cGet Deals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rybak clicked \u201cCompare Providers,\u201d which took her to another page of advertisements for internet providers\u2014this time including offers from Spectrum and Verizon\u2014that she did not want. She then clicked \u201cGet Deals.\u201d A cheerful header read, \u201cEmilia, reward yourself for moving!\u201d followed by advertisements for home security systems, furniture stores, and pizza. Rybak\u2019s only options to move forward were a big blue button labeled, \u201cGET ALL & CONTINUE\u201d or a very light blue, harder-to-read button labeled, \u201cGet only selected.\u201d In tiny gray text at the bottom of the page, the website informed her that her contact information was being provided to the advertisers she selected. Once again, there was no option to skip or choose none.<\/p>\n
At that point, Rybak was fed up. She abandoned the task and moved her cursor to close the website. But before she could, a pop up appeared on her screen. \u201cDon\u2019t go yet!\u201d it said. \u201cMoving is expensive, so why not save where you can?\u201c It was followed by two buttons: \u201cGET ALL & CONTINUE\u201d or \u201cSELECT MY OFFERS.\u201d Rybak closed the page, giving up, for the time being, on registering to vote.<\/p>\n
Presenting ads with no options to close them; hiding buttons you don\u2019t want users to click with small, lightly shaded text; and redirecting users on tangents away from their intended goal on a website are all textbook dark patterns, says Johanna Gunawan, a computer science and law professor at Maastricht University, in the Netherlands. But what alarmed her most about MyMove\u2019s website was the context. Users might be prepared for deceptive design on a shopping website, but not when registering to vote.<\/p>\n
When Rybak checked her email inbox after leaving the MyMove site, she found it topped off with messages from the advertisers she\u2019d tried to avoid. She also had an email from MyMove stating that her voter registration was almost complete. All she needed to do was print a form, fill it out, and physically mail it in to an election office. If this all had to be done anyway, Rybak wondered, what was the point of the MyMove website?<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t appear there is one, if all you want to do is register to vote.<\/p>\n
In a statement, MyMove told WIRED that everyone who begins the online voter registration process receives a \u201cprompt\u201d email with instructions for filling out and mailing in the required form, \u201cindependent of whether they choose to engage with any moving related promotional offers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand that online experiences, particularly those connected to civic processes, demand particular care,\u201d MyMove wrote. \u201cWe regularly review and refine our user experience and use customer feedback to update our products.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, Brett Matthews was already a successful entrepreneur. He worked for a business that made informational booklets about medical conditions, paid for by drug or supplement makers, for doctors to read and display in their offices. One day, while filling out a change-of-address postcard, which used to be how movers notified USPS of their new mailing addresses, inspiration struck Matthews for a new middle-man business.<\/p>\n
Matthews and his wife, Virginia Salazar, formed a company called Targeted Marketing Solutions and began cold-calling the postal service with a proposal: a public-private partnership where they would update and manage the agency\u2019s change-of-address process free of charge; USPS would later allow them to package coupons and offers from advertisers into a physical welcome kit that would be mailed to each mover\u2019s new home.<\/p>\n
Matthews, who is now an executive at a plant-based nutritional shake company, tells WIRED that he and Salazar must have reached out to USPS 20 times before they got their foot in the door. Even after they caught the attention of postal officials, their proposal was bogged down in government processes, privacy concerns, and a debate about whether the welcome kits would imply that the US government endorsed the brands advertised in them.<\/p>\n
In 1992, USPS agreed to run a pilot of the program. By 1995, Targeted Marketing Solutions had an exclusive, national contract. And in 1997, Vice President Al Gore gave the company an award for reinventing government. \u201cOur goal, broadly stated, is to reclaim the original meaning of that phrase \u2018good enough for government work,\u2019 so that not too many years from now that phrase will mean the very best, the highest level of quality,\u201d Gore said before presenting Matthews with the honor.<\/p>\n
Matthews says that while he was involved, Targeted Marketing Solutions had its own user interface lab that studied the customer experience. The goal was to \u201cmake sure they get their service, it\u2019s clear for them front and center, and then they can go on and get some value\u201d from advertisements.<\/p>\n
Matthews ran Targeted Marketing Solutions, which rebranded to Imagitas, through the launch of the first mover\u2019s guide website in 2001, until shortly after its sale to shipping solutions company Pitney Bowes for $230 million in 2005. In 2015, Pitney Bowes sold Imagitas for $310 million to Red Ventures, which renamed it MyMove.<\/p>\n
The details of USPS\u2019s contract with MyMove are secret. Unlike most government agencies, whose contracts are subject to inspection under public records laws, USPS claims a special exemption to the federal Freedom of Information Act for its business contracts because it operates in a competitive field against private shipping firms.<\/p>\n
As a result, the little information publicly available about the MyMove deal comes from a whistleblower lawsuit filed against the company in 2020 by a former director of operations, Marcos Arellano, who alleged that MyMove and Red Ventures executives purposefully misclassified expenses and revenues in order to defraud USPS.<\/p>\n
Arellano\u2019s complaint alleges that MyMove is responsible for maintaining, testing, and optimizing the Mover\u2019s Guide website and is only allowed to sell customer data to advertisers once the customer has navigated away from the official USPS change-of-address page to MyMove\u2019s site, which is where the voter registration workflow is kept.<\/p>\n
The complaint is partially sealed to conceal specific details about the contract, but it claims that USPS is guaranteed a minimum cut each year, after which the agency and MyMove split any revenue generated by \u201cvisitors or abandoners\u201d of MyMove.com.<\/p>\n
Neither USPS nor MyMove answered WIRED\u2019s questions about the contract.<\/p>\n
As lucrative as dark patterns can be, they\u2019re also increasingly drawing the attention of regulators. Last year, the FTC secured a $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon after accusing it of using manipulative design to trick customers into unwanted subscriptions. And in 2023, the agency reached a $245 million settlement with Epic Games, after alleging that the company used dark patterns to trick users into making unwanted payments.<\/p>\n
In addition to the threat of a fine, many in the web design industry have come to see that employing aggressive dark patterns will quickly hurt their brand\u2019s reputation with customers, says Gunawan, the Maastricht University professor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a betrayal,\u201d Gunawan says, especially coming from a website users perceive as an arm of their government. \u201cIt messes with my perception of trust because I trust the public institution, and I trust that their contracts are made in the best interest of citizenry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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