Surveillance Pricing and Personal Data

If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product, as the refrain goes. In other words,

many social media sites and search engines that provide free services do so in exchange

for your personal data. But with “surveillance pricing,” consumers give up data that

enables companies to sometimes charge them more for products. Surveillance pricing

describes a practice in which a company sets a price for particular consumers based

on what it gleans from their personal data. New parents, for example,

may be shown baby thermometers at the top of their search results that are more

expensive than those shown to the couple seated next to them; someone who has just