If you give up your privacy, you might pay less than your neighbor.
If you give up your privacy, you might pay less than your neighbor.
Publish Date: 2026-05-21 16:14:00
Source Domain: www.usatoday.com
Updated May 21, 2026, 4:14 p.m. ET
Is your store spying on you in order to change the price of what you might buy?
Surveillance pricing − or the practice of using shoppers’ personal data to alter prices − is a controversial topic.
Opponents say surveillance pricing is unfair, and shoppers don’t want to pay different and sometimes higher prices for the same item. Proponents say surveillance pricing is used to offer discounts to shoppers and does not raise costs.
A growing number of states are starting to weigh in on the practice, with at least 40 bills in 24 states looking to limit or ban surveillance pricing. In April, Maryland became the first state to prohibit it, though opponents such as Consumer Reports said the law did not go far enough in protecting consumers. Additionally, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, launched an inquiry into surveillance pricing in May.
What is surveillance pricing?
Surveillance pricing is using data to potentially alter a price based on the customer’s behavior, said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative.
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Sometimes that information is given to a company by the customer through a loyalty program membership and sometimes it is data collected by the company from the shopper’s browsing or purchases, she said.
“I like to think of surveillance pricing as the practice of spying on customers in order to potentially overcharge them,” Owens told USA TODAY. “It’s a practice that is becoming more common as shoppers spend more of their time shopping online, where it’s relatively easy for companies to track lots of behavior about you: what you put in your cart, what you click on, what you hover your mouse over or what you buy frequently if you’re signing into a loyalty program.”
In a recent survey of voters by Groundwork Collaborative, 76% of respondents said they supported…
