The FTC's proposal: if a machine set your price by reading your data, the shop has to tell you which data it read
On 19 August the Federal Trade Commission voted 2-0 to publish a proposed enforcement policy statement on personalised pricing, saying it will use Section 5 of the FTC Act against sellers who quote individual prices without saying so. A business would have to disclose three things: that the price is personalised, the basis on which it is personalised, and the types of data feeding it. Implying that a price is the same for everyone when it varies by customer would count as deceptive. The statement singles out prices keyed to signs of vulnerability — a health condition, a family emergency, having no alternative — and says explicitly that machine learning and automated experimentation are a risk multiplier because they make segmentation far more granular. It is a proposal, not a rule: comments are open for 30 days after Federal Register publication under docket FTC-2026-1057, and the agency notes it has no authority to ban the practice outright.
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