India Banned 13 'Subscription Trap' Dark Patterns in 2025: Is Netflix or Amazon Still Using Them on You?

In June 2025, India’s Central Consumer Protection Authority told every e-commerce platform operating in the country to look at its own checkout and subscription flows and admit what it found. The advisory, dated June 5, 2025, gave companies three months to self-audit against a list of 13 dark patterns the CCPA had already defined back in its 2023 guidelines, and to fix whatever they found. One of those 13 categories has a name that will sound familiar to anyone who has tried to cancel a streaming plan or an e-commerce membership: the subscription trap.

By November 2025, 26 major platforms, including Flipkart, Myntra, Zepto, Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit, BigBasket, JioMart, Meesho, Ajio, MakeMyTrip and Tata 1mg, had submitted formal self-declarations to the government stating their apps were free of dark patterns, a real regulatory milestone rather than a one-off press statement. It’s also, if you actually use these apps, worth treating with some skepticism: MediaNama reported in April 2026 that Amazon’s shopping app still showed dark-pattern behaviour despite having filed its own compliance declaration with the CCPA weeks earlier.

Here’s the part that matters for this post: none of the 26 self-declaring platforms were OTT or streaming services. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, JioHotstar and the rest were not part of that declaration exercise, and no video-subscription app has been named or fined by the CCPA specifically for a subscription-trap violation in India as of this writing. Streaming platforms have largely treated the 2023 guidelines as an e-commerce problem, not their problem, and so far the enforcement record backs that reading up. No one has audited them yet, so it’s worth doing yourself.

For scale, this isn’t a uniquely Indian concern: in the US, the FTC reached a $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon in September 2025 over what Amazon internally nicknamed the “Iliad Flow”, a deliberately long, save-offer-filled Prime cancellation path. The mechanics the FTC objected to there (burying the cancel button, hitting you with “are you sure” offers) are the same mechanics the CCPA’s subscription-trap category targets here.

What a “subscription trap” actually is, officially

The CCPA’s Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023 (the same document the 2025 advisory enforces) lists subscription trap alongside 12 other named patterns, including false urgency, basket sneaking, confirm shaming, forced action, interface interference, bait and switch, drip pricing, disguised advertising, and nagging. Subscription trap covers the specific move of making it deliberately hard to cancel a recurring payment, or converting a free trial or low-cost plan into a full paid subscription without a clear, affirmative choice from the user, and it’s the pattern most directly tied to money quietly leaving your account every month.

Run this audit on your own subscriptions right now

You don’t need to wait for a CCPA notice to check your own apps. Pull up every OTT and e-commerce subscription you’re paying for and walk through this list for each one.

1. Open your account or subscription settings and find the auto-renew toggle. Is it on by default, and did you ever actively switch it on, or did the app just assume yes? A toggle you never touched but that’s charging you every month is the clearest sign of a subscription trap.
2. Look for the actual cancel button. Is it labeled “Cancel,” or is it buried under “Pause membership,” “Downgrade plan,” or “Manage benefits”? Several Indian OTT apps route cancellation through a benefits page that leads with a discount offer before it ever shows a cancel option.
3. Try to cancel and count the screens. If getting from your account page to a confirmed cancellation takes more than two or three taps, or routes you through a phone call or a chat agent, that mirrors the long-path tactic the FTC objected to in the Amazon case above, just applied locally.
4. Read what happens when you hit cancel. Does the app immediately confirm, or does it throw up a screen asking “Are you sure you want to lose access to premium content?” with the decline option styled as a tiny gray link under a bright “Keep my plan” button? That’s confirm-shaming, and it’s on the CCPA’s list by name.
5. Check where the renewal price and date are actually disclosed. Is it stated plainly on the payment screen and in a renewal reminder email, or only inside the terms and conditions you had to scroll through and tick without reading? Disclosure buried in T&Cs instead of shown at the point of payment is the kind of gap the 2023 guidelines were written to close.
6. Check what happens after you cancel. Do you get a confirmation email or in-app notice with a specific end date, or does the app just go quiet and hope you forget to check your bank statement next month?

If any app fails more than one of these, you’re not imagining it. That behaviour matches a category the CCPA has explicitly named as a violation.

What to do if a platform fails the audit

Cancel through every channel available, screenshot each step as you go, and check your bank or card statement the following month to confirm the charge actually stopped. If it doesn’t, or if the cancel flow itself is the problem, you have somewhere real to take it. Call the National Consumer Helpline at 1915 or file at consumerhelpline.gov.in, which forwards the complaint to the company directly and flags it for the CCPA. If the platform doesn’t fix it within 15 days, you can file a formal case through the e-daakhil portal at edaakhil.nic.in, the government’s online system for consumer commission cases. The CCPA has already fined companies including PhysicsWallah and McAfee for dark-pattern violations under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, so this isn’t a toothless complaint box, even if it hasn’t reached streaming apps yet.

Once you’ve been through this checklist app by app, the bigger question is usually how many of these subscriptions you actually still want. Run everything through our subscription calculator to see the real monthly total sitting on your card, traps and all.

FAQ

Did the CCPA actually ban Netflix or Amazon Prime Video by name? No. The CCPA’s June 2025 advisory and the November 2025 self-declaration drive covered e-commerce platforms like Flipkart, Myntra, Swiggy, Zomato and Blinkit, not video streaming apps. Amazon has faced separate scrutiny over dark patterns tied to Prime membership sign-up (including a large FTC settlement in the US), but no OTT app has been named or penalised specifically for a subscription-trap violation in India as of this writing. That gap is exactly why it’s worth running your own audit instead of waiting for a regulator to do it for you.

Where do I file a complaint if a platform is still using these tactics? Start with the National Consumer Helpline: call 1915 or file online at consumerhelpline.gov.in, which routes complaints to the company and to the CCPA. If the platform doesn’t resolve it within 15 days, you can escalate to a formal case on the e-daakhil portal (edaakhil.nic.in), which is the online filing system for consumer commissions. Keep screenshots of the renewal screen, the cancel flow, and any confirm-shaming pop-up as evidence.