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Yes, personal data can be used to tailor prices or promotions, but a price difference alone does not prove that a retailer charged you more because of your profile. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported in January 2025 that pricing intermediaries’ tools could use signals such as location, demographics, browsing and shopping activity, mouse movements, and items left in a cart. That documents a capability—not a finding that every retailer uses it, or that a particular shopper has paid more because of personal data.
Three different things can make online shopping look personal
People often use “personalized pricing” to describe any online offer that seems tailored to them. It helps to separate three practices, because each can produce a different shopping experience.
- Dynamic pricing: A price changes with factors such as demand, available supply, time, or sales channel. The change need not depend on the identity or history of an individual shopper.
- Personalized pricing: Personal data is used to set a different price for a particular consumer, potentially based on what a company believes that person is willing to pay.
- Personalized ranking: A site changes which products or offers it shows, or their order. The underlying price for a given product may be unchanged.
A different search result or a promotion appearing on one device is not, by itself, evidence that the same product was assigned a different price for you.
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What the FTC says pricing systems can use
In January 2025, the FTC published initial staff findings from a market study of intermediary firms. Staff examined initial documents from Mastercard, Accenture, PROS, Bloomreach, Revionics, and McKinsey & Co. The agency described tools that retailers could use to tailor prices or promotions using consumer-related data, behavior, preferences, location, time, and sales channel. Potential signals included searches and purchases, mouse movements, and products left in an online cart.
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The FTC also said the intermediaries it examined worked with at least 250 clients selling goods or services ranging from groceries to apparel. That is a count of intermediary clients, not a count of retailers proven to charge individualized prices. The agency’s public findings use aggregated or anonymized information to protect confidential business details. One example in the FTC release—a shopper profiled as a new parent being shown a higher-priced baby thermometer—was hypothetical, not a documented incident at a named store.
These findings establish that the capabilities exist and that firms offer them. They do not establish how widely retailers use them, which signals a particular retailer uses, or whether any given person has paid more as a result. The sources reviewed here do not provide a current, representative estimate for the share of US retailers personalizing prices or how often an individual shopper pays more because of personal data.
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What studies found about prices and product rankings
A European Commission study published in 2018 reported mystery shopping conducted in the second and third quarters of 2017. Researchers checked 160 e-commerce websites in eight EU member states, covering airline tickets, hotel rooms, sports shoes, and televisions. The findings are historical and limited to those markets, sectors, and methods; they are not a current estimate for online commerce as a whole.
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| Finding from the 2017 exercise | What it means |
|---|---|
| Personalized ranking at 61% of the 160 websites visited | Sites changed the selection or ordering of offers; this does not mean they changed the price for each person. |
| Ranking personalization at 92% of airline-ticket sites, 76% of hotel-room sites, 41% of sports-shoe sites, and 36% of television sites | These are sector-specific ranking findings, not rates of personalized pricing. |
| Price differences in 6% of identical-product situations; median difference under 1.6% | The study did not find consistent and systematic personalized pricing in the markets and countries it covered. |
The Commission cautioned that mystery shopping can be difficult when algorithms are sophisticated and change over time. The study is useful evidence about the particular exercise, but neither its low observed rate of price differences nor its ranking figures settle how online prices are set today.
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A 2021 OECD paper reported a laboratory experiment in Ireland and Chile. Disclosure had limited effects on participants’ ability to identify and understand personalized pricing, and the experiment did not confirm a significant effect on purchasing behavior. Questionnaire respondents, on average, considered personalized pricing unfair and thought it should be prohibited. This experiment measured responses in a lab; it did not estimate retailer prevalence or measure real-world price changes.
How to check whether two offers are genuinely comparable
If the same item appears at different prices on your phone and someone else’s, first check whether the purchase conditions match. Online listings can differ for reasons unrelated to an individual profile, and a simple comparison cannot identify the cause by itself.
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- Match the product and seller. Check the exact model, size, condition, seller identity, and quantity. Marketplace listings for similar products may come from different sellers.
- Match the full cost. Compare shipping, taxes, delivery speed, and any fees, not only the displayed item price.
- Match the purchase circumstances. Note the location, time, sales channel, account status, and any coupon, loyalty benefit, or promotion. Inventory and demand can change over time.
- Repeat under controlled conditions. Compare the same item and seller at roughly the same time, using the same location and purchase conditions where possible. If you change several variables at once, you cannot tell which one affected the offer.
- Check another retailer or channel. A retailer’s app, website, or other sales channel may present different offers. A difference across channels still does not, on its own, show that personal data caused it.
Keep a record of the listing details and total price if you need to contact the retailer. The observation can establish that offers differed under the conditions you recorded; it cannot establish the retailer’s reason without further evidence.
Can incognito mode or a VPN get you a lower price?
They may change selected signals, but neither is a guaranteed way to get a cheaper or uniform offer. The FTC’s August 2026 announcement named VPNs and private-browsing sessions as possible consumer steps, not as proven fixes.
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- Private browsing: It can limit some browsing history stored locally in the browser. It does not make you anonymous to a retailer when you sign in, and it does not erase data the retailer already holds.
- VPN: It changes the apparent network location, which may affect a location signal. It does not by itself remove account history, loyalty-program data, device signals, or information held by a retailer.
If you test either approach, change one condition at a time and compare the same item, seller, quantity, and total cost. A changed offer after switching sessions shows a difference, not proof that the tool caused it or that a profile-based price was involved.
What the FTC policy announcement does—and does not—establish
In August 2026, the FTC announced a draft enforcement policy statement and invited public comment. The agency described personalized pricing as using personal data to set a price based on what a company believes an individual consumer is willing to spend. The announcement said undisclosed collection or use of personal data for this purpose could violate laws the FTC enforces, including prohibitions on unfair or deceptive practices. It also said the FTC does not have authority to ban personalized pricing in every circumstance.
The announced statement was a draft, not a final rule. Its listed comment deadline was September 18, 2026, which has passed. The announcement alone does not establish what the agency did after that deadline or the current status of the proposal; it should not be described as an operative blanket ban.
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