The FTC's New Personalized-Pricing Policy: What Businesses Would Have to Tell You

You've probably had the experience of pricing something out on your phone, then checking again later on a laptop, and seeing a different number. Sometimes that's a stale cache. Increasingly, it's not an accident — it's a pricing model built specifically to charge you a number calculated from your own data. On August 19, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission announced it's asking for public comment on its first proposed enforcement policy aimed directly at that practice: personalized pricing, sometimes called surveillance pricing.

What the FTC is proposing

The FTC's draft is a proposed Enforcement Policy Statement, not a final rule — it's a public comment period, not a binding requirement yet. But it lays out, in concrete terms, what the agency thinks businesses already owe consumers under existing law when they set an individualized price using someone's personal data. The draft policy states that a business doing this must "clearly and conspicuously disclose not just that the price is personalized, but also the basis for that personalization and the types of data on which the personalization is based." That's three distinct things a business would need to tell you: that the price is personalized at all, roughly why (what made your price different), and what kind of data went into the calculation — location, browsing history, past purchases, device type, or something else.

The legal hook the FTC is using isn't new: Section 5 of the FTC Act, the same "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" authority behind a huge share of the agency's consumer-protection enforcement (it's the FTC's version of the standard we've explained in detail for the CFPB's UDAAP framework). The FTC's own position, stated directly in the proposal, is notably narrow: the agency says it does not have the legal authority to ban personalized pricing outright. What it's asserting authority over is the failure to disclose it. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson put it plainly: the agency "does not have the legal authority to ban personalized pricing in all circumstances, but businesses that fail to tell consumers how their personal data is being used to set a price may be in violation of the FTC Act and other laws we enforce."

The public comment window is now open: 30 days from the FTC's August 19 announcement, running through September 18, 2026, at 11:59 PM ET, under Docket No. FTC-2026-1057 at regulations.gov. If you want to weigh in before it's finalized, that docket is where a comment actually gets read.

Why this is happening now

This isn't coming out of nowhere. States have started moving on the same issue faster than the federal government. Maryland's governor signed the Protection From Predatory Pricing Act (HB 895) into law on April 28, 2026, restricting grocers and third-party delivery services from using dynamic pricing or personal data to charge shoppers more — Maryland's own announcement calls it the first state law of its kind. New Jersey followed on July 23, 2026, when its governor signed the Fair Price Protection Act, which bars businesses from using data like a shopper's location, purchase history, or online activity to charge different prices for the same grocery item, while explicitly carving out ordinary loyalty programs and discounts. Neither state release spells out enforcement penalties in detail — that level of detail lives in the statute text itself, not the announcement — but both make clear this is now an active area of state law, not just a federal proposal.

Put together, you have a pattern: state attorneys general and legislatures moving first on outright bans in specific sectors (mostly groceries so far), and the FTC now moving on a disclosure-first approach that would apply more broadly. That's a meaningfully different regulatory strategy — ban the practice versus require you to be told about it — and it's worth understanding the difference, because it changes what recourse you'd actually have.

What this means if you're the one being priced

If this policy is finalized as proposed, it wouldn't make personalized pricing illegal. It would require a business using it to tell you, in a clear and conspicuous way, that your price was individualized and roughly what went into that calculation. In practice, if you're comparison shopping and something in a business's checkout flow says your price reflects data specific to you, that disclosure — not the price difference itself — is what the FTC would be able to act on if it's missing, misleading, or hard to find.

It's also worth being honest about what this policy doesn't do. It doesn't cap how much your price can differ from someone else's. It doesn't require a business to explain its algorithm. And because it's still a proposed policy statement open for public comment, not an adopted rule, none of this is enforceable yet — businesses aren't currently required to make these disclosures under this specific FTC policy, whatever they might already owe you under state law in Maryland, New Jersey, or elsewhere.

What this isn't

This is a plain-language summary of a proposed federal enforcement policy and two enacted state laws, not legal advice, and not a claim that any specific business is engaged in — or has been found to have violated — personalized-pricing rules. ClearValue Money isn't a regulator, a law firm, or a retailer, and this isn't an assertion about how any specific company, including any ClearValue-family brand, prices its own products; if you think a specific price you were charged violated a state law like Maryland's or New Jersey's, or you want to submit a comment once the FTC's policy is formally published, the state attorney general's office or the Federal Register itself are the right places to go, not this summary.

Where this fits

We've made the same case before about the FTC's rule against fake reviews and testimonials and about what actually makes a money site worth trusting: the useful question usually isn't "is this shady," it's "am I being told what I need to know to judge this myself." A personalized price isn't automatically unfair — but a personalized price you weren't told about takes that judgment away from you entirely. That's the gap this proposed policy is aimed at closing, and it's worth watching whether it actually gets adopted.