Your personal data, including your precise location, browser history, and even your mouse movements, is being used by some companies to show different prices for the same products—a phenomenon the FTC has dubbed “surveillance pricing.”
According to a new FTC report, retailers are hiring “intermediary firms” to algorithmically tweak and target their prices.
“Instead of a price or promotion being a static feature of a product, the same product could have a different price or promotion based on a variety of inputs—including consumer-related data and their behaviors and preferences, the location, time, and channels by which a consumer buys the product,” the FTC says.
Yeah i see. I have heard a similar angle of the same tactic for ‘smart trolleys’ where your shopping trolley/cart has a tablet device you scan your customer ID with and then scan items as you shop directly into your cart and when you leave you simply pick your bags out of the trolley and walk out with automatic debiting.
However who is to say what price you see on your screen vs the guy shopping next to you like you just said, tech will really be used for the worst purposes unless regulations are in place.