State lawmakers across the country have introduced more than 50 bills in 2026 targeting the use of personal data — browsing history, location, device type, purchase patterns — to set individualized retail prices, a practice researchers call personalized pricing or surveillance pricing. The legislative push follows the April enactment of a Maryland law that bans food retailers and delivery services from charging higher prices to individual customers based on their personal data, making it the first state-level prohibition of the practice.
The concern, according to researchers and regulators, is that companies have access to increasingly detailed customer profiles drawn from across the internet, and pricing algorithms powered by artificial intelligence can turn that data into tailored prices on the fly. While many retailers say they are not doing this, the Federal Trade Commission’s early 2025 investigation into surveillance pricing determined that companies were already selling tools to help retailers set individualized prices — a finding researchers said indicated the practice was on the horizon.
“I think it is only a matter of time before online retailers start setting prices based on fine-tuned profiles of individuals,” Len Sherman, a Columbia Business School professor, told the Wall Street Journal. Sherman said a ride-share company that knows a customer’s daily morning routine to take children to school could logically price the trip higher. “They have the data,” he said.
A December 2025 investigation by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative recruited more than 400 shoppers to log onto Instacart simultaneously and fill identical grocery carts. They found that three-quarters of the products showed different prices for different shoppers, with some items varying by as much as 23%. An Instacart spokesperson said the price variations were the result of randomized experiments, not personalized pricing, and that the company has since ended them.
The National Retail Federation said it has no evidence any of its members are engaging in the practice. “Without building customer trust, you have nothing,” said Jason Straczewski, the NRF Group’s vice president of government relations and political affairs.
New York has already enacted a disclosure law that took effect in November 2025, requiring companies to tell customers when they use personal data to set prices. State legislators have since introduced two bills that would ban the practice outright, while preserving loyalty programs, coupons, and discounts for veterans and seniors. In California, a bill moving through committee would also ban the use of personal data for individualized retail pricing statewide.
“A ban will be more effective than a disclosure,” said Grace Gedye, a policy analyst at Consumer Reports who tracks algorithmic-pricing legislation. “A disclosure puts the onus on consumers to figure out what to do with that information. A ban means you’re protected by default.”
At the federal level, the FTC shut down public comment on its surveillance-pricing investigation in 2025, but the agency’s chairman said in April the commission is still exploring whether new disclosure rules are needed. The House Oversight Committee launched a separate investigation in March, sending letters to companies requesting documents about their pricing practices. A committee spokesperson said the investigation is continuing.
John Yun, a law professor at George Mason University, said the question of personalized pricing bumps up against an older tradition in market regulation: the idea that there are limits to how much companies can exploit a customer’s desperate circumstances.
“There’s always been that appetite for reasonableness within a market system,” Yun said. “I think that’s where personalized pricing is butting up against what we consider a reasonable use of supply and demand.”
Experts said consumers can take limited steps to protect themselves — comparing prices across devices or browsers, using incognito mode, searching through aggregator sites before going directly to a company’s platform, or using a VPN for international travel. But they warned that hiding one’s digital footprint can also backfire: the same tools that can charge more for an urgent purchase can also offer discounts to a hesitant or price-sensitive shopper.
“If you block your data, you only see the list price,” said Ginger Zhe Jin, an economist at the University of Maryland who studies personalized pricing. “And the list price is the highest price you could pay.”