Customers walk by the Target store at Stonestown Galleria in 2025. In 2022, San Diego County reached a $5 million settlement with Target after prosecutors found the retailer was increasing prices in its app when customers entered a store’s parking lot. 

Imagine you and your neighbor are shopping online for groceries and household essentials — same items, same retailer, same moment — but the prices you each see are different. You add an item to your cart for $4.99; your neighbor adds the same one for $3.99. An algorithm decided, based on your browsing history, your ZIP code or how often you check your phone, that you’d pay more without noticing.

That’s not a sale. That’s surveillance pricing. And it’s already happening to Californians.

Surveillance pricing is the practice of using your personal data — including your income, your location and your internet search history — to determine not what something costs, but what you should be charged. Rather than competing on price, companies use data to estimate the maximum each consumer is willing to pay. As artificial intelligence and dynamic pricing technologies become more sophisticated, this practice is rapidly expanding.

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Many companies now have troves of data on each of us. A Consumer Reports investigation found that the grocery chain Kroger built detailed shopper profiles using loyalty programs and purchase history data — inferring shoppers’ income, family size, gender, education level and even whether they owned a pet — that could........

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