How Surveillance-Based Pricing Is Driving Up Costs-and What You Can Do

Swift Summary

• Surveillance Pricing: A practice where companies adjust prices based on individualized consumer data (ICD), creating profiles from extensive online and offline facts like cookies, IP address, and browsing fingerprints.
• Example: Two users shopping for the same television on Amazon may see different prices ($499 vs.$599) depending on their spending habits as identified by ICD.
• Data Collection Methods: Companies analyze scrolling behavior, abandoned cart items, geographic details, plugins installed, screen size, system fonts, and more to create a “fingerprint” of the consumer.
• Detection Challenges: surveillance pricing is difficult to identify; consumers may notice inconsistent pricing or reactive advertising tailored to their past behavior as clues.
• Defensive Strategies:

– Comparison shopping across platforms or physical stores,
– Use of VPNs (though effectiveness varies due to browser fingerprinting),
– Avoidance of loyalty apps that collect detailed consumer data,
– Switching devices when browsing for better pricing results.

• Legislative Efforts: the Federal Trade Commission has initiated an investigation into surveillance pricing practices; states are considering regulations.

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