What to Know About Surveillance Pricing as States Crack Down on Usage

Federal regulators and state lawmakers are scrutinizing how companies use personal data—from browsing habits to location—to tailor prices.

Shoppers at a grocery store in Centreville, Va. on Nov. 2, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Shoppers at a grocery store in Centreville, Va. on Nov. 2, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The price you pay for a product may depend not just on demand, but on what companies know about you.

Surveillance pricing is a growing practice nationwide, where businesses use individualized prices to maximize profits, based on calculations about what the consumer is willing to pay. 

Companies such as JetBlue and Instacart are under the microscope for use of surveillance pricing, even as legislation is moving through state lawmakers’ hands to halt the practice. 

Here’s what to know about how surveillance pricing works.

What Is Surveillance Pricing?

A July order by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) compelled eight companies, including Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, and Accenture, to provide documents about how retailers used surveillance pricing tools.

The order was aimed at helping the agency understand how companies used these practices to set individualized prices for customers. 

The report tracks consumer behaviors, such as abandoned shopping carts, frequency of visits, and mouse movements, to create a profile on a buyer. 

Those insights were combined with external information—geographical location and social media activity—to adjust prices. 

Despite potential benefits, such as possible discounts, the FTC’s report was wary of possible risks to vulnerable groups.

They include possible impulse buying during critical times, for example those surrounding natural disasters. 

“These tools could also potentially be used to collect behavioral details that a retailer could use to forecast a customer’s state of mind, such as using a shopper’s selection of ‘fast-delivery’ shipping on an order of infant formula to infer that a shopper could be a rushed parent who may be less price sensitive,” the report states.

How it Differs from Dynamic Pricing

While any change in price can cause questions by consumers, surveillance pricing differs from dynamic pricing in a few key ways. 

Dynamic pricing changes based on market conditions, like demand, supply, and timing.

Some good examples of that would be transportation costs during high-demand seasons, such as the holidays, or an Uber ride after a major concert. 

Surveillance pricing, however, is based on the individual customer’s data profile, including browsing history. 

In other words, dynamic pricing adjusts to the market, while surveillance pricing adjusts to the individual. 

What the FTC Has Found So Far

The FTC released findings of the study on surveillance pricing in January 2025. 

The study found that retailers rely on a range of personal data, including location, browsing history, and demographics, to tailor prices.

The agency also stated these practices are cause for concern due to a lack of transparency and marketplace fairness. 

“Retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and services—from a person’s location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement at the time. 

“Americans deserve to know how their private data is being used to set the prices they pay and whether firms are charging different people different prices for the same good or service.”

The FTC voted to release the report in an effort to contribute to the public’s understanding and discussion around issues that have the potential to become part of federal legislation in the future.

States Taking Action

In Colorado, HB 26-1210 addresses companies pushing personal data into automated decision systems to push prices as high as possible, while offering the lowest possible wages. 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center supported the bill, saying it is “carefully tailored to stop this predatory, unfair, and privacy-invasive practice while still allowing for transparent and fair discount and loyalty offerings and human discretion in wage offerings.”

The group’s senior counsel, Calli Schroeder, testified before the state legislature in March 2026.

She said: “Coloradans reasonably expect to pay the same prices as their neighbors for products and to receive fair pay for their work—not have their personal data exploited to more efficiently empty their wallets.”

Similarly, Maryland’s state legislature passed the Predatory Pricing Act, HB 895, which will ban food retailers from surveillance pricing.

That bill was approved by Gov. Wes Moore on April 28, and will go into effect on Oct. 1, 2026. 

New York passed its Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act in May 2025 and it went into effect last November. It requires businesses to inform customers when prices are set using personalized algorithms.

Additionally, the New York Attorney General’s Office launched a public investigation in January 2026.

California is considering legislation, AB 446, to regulate how businesses use personal data for pricing. The bill would prohibit the use of demographics such as financial circumstances, web history, or consumer behaviors for pricing decisions. 

The state’s move came months before California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a sweeping investigation into the use of personal data for price setting in January 2026.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) introduced federal legislation in December 2025, setting up a crackdown on surveillance pricing.

“No one should be charged more just because a company is digging into their background and exploiting their data. It’s wrong, and I won’t stop working until we get this bill across the finish line and end these abusive practices once and for all,” she said in a statement.

Tom Ozimek and Jill McLaughlin contributed to this report.