What Is ‘surveillance pricing?' How retailers, loyalty programs collect and use your data

From browsing history to loyalty programs, the data you share could give retailers more insight into what you’re willing to pay By PJ Randhawa, Leigh Lesniak and NBC 5 Responds Published November 12, 2026 Updated on November 13, 2026 at Could the price you pay for groceries depend on what companies know about you and your search habits? The idea is called " surveillance pricing," and it involves how your personal data could influence prices when you shop online or in stores.

The Details

The idea is a concern of a growing number of local, state and federal lawmakers.

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“They’re going to figure out how to rip you off one person at a time,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this summer.

“I don’t think we consumers have a fighting chance,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin added, speaking at the same hearing.

Speaking to Meet the Press in 2025, U.S. Rep Greg Casar, of Texas, called it a "silent killer."

"It's spreading," he said.

Federal Trade Commission is looking into it too. FTC officials confirmed data, like location and browsing history, can factor into the price you see. The agency recently ordered nine major companies — including Walmart, Target, United Airlines and DoorDash — to hand over information about how they set their prices.

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"Our default reaction would be it's unfair for me to be charged a higher price and someone else to be charged a lower price," said JP Dubé, Professor of Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

But Dubé says different prices don’t necessarily mean surveillance pricing is in play.

Randomized Price Testing

Instacart and StubHub have acknowledged using randomized price testing after customers noticed price differences. Instacart ended the randomized testing back in December 2025 and has publicly committed to not do surveillance pricing today or in the future.

"The reason you randomize your prices is to learn how responsive demand as a whole is to different prices," said Dubé.

Now, lawsuits around the country are raising the stakes, accusing businesses like McDonald’s of using shared pricing technology to charge customers more.

"This is about, a big company using a big tech AI platform you know, not to benefit its customers. But instead to make sure that it's kind of squeezing every last dollar out of its customers," said Derek Brandt, Clarkson Law Firm.

Now, several US Senators want the CEO of McDonalds to answer questions about its AI pricing tools and whether they could be costing customers more.

McDonalds did not respond NBC Chicago's request for a comment.

The concerns also moving into store aisles, as Walmart rolls out digital price tags to all U.S. stores by 2027. Federal lawmakers have even proposed banning such tags, even as Walmart insists it won’t use them to personalize prices.

"They can be used to implement AI surveillance pricing in the store," Hawley said at the hearing. "This will end up costing jobs," said One Walmart worker told NBC News it could be used for good.

"Instead of us spending hours changing the prices, we can spend hours helping customers," the employee said.

"The possibility that someone could do something is what we're afraid of. It's not that we have any evidence that anyone has done anything," said Dubé.

Our NBC 5 Responds team wanted to see for ourselves if Walmart’s digital price tags changed throughout the day. So we documented the price of hundreds of items at three Chicagoland stores, three different times throughout a random weekday. We found not a single price changed.

Loyalty Programs Are Using Your Data

You may already be sharing more with retailers than you realize.

"You get special loyalty deals, discounts and so forth, and in exchange, you allow the retailer to track your data. As soon as we consent, then the data that's being tracked under that consent is free game for surveilling," said Dubé.

While customers can't always see what’s happening behind the screen, they can limit some of the data left behind. Here are a few tips:

Browse more privately: Use private/incognito mode and reject non-essential cookies.

Limit location tracking: Turn off unnecessary location access for shopping apps, and consider a VPN.

Shop logged out: When you don’t need your account or loyalty benefits.