New York City Bans 'Surveillance Pricing,' So Stores Can't Use Your Personal Data to Set Your Price

New York City shoppers just got a new protection at the checkout. The City Council on Thursday passed a bill banning "surveillance pricing," the practice of using a customer's personal data, such as browsing history, to charge that person a different price than someone else pays for the same product, the New York Post reported.

The measure, sponsored by Julie Menin, passed 44-5, according to La Voce di New York. It was one of several bills the Council took up at Thursday's meeting. Consumer Reports, which backed the effort, said the vote would make New York the second city in the nation to ban the practice.

Most Americans are used to prices that change. Airline fares rise near a holiday, stores run weekend sales, and rideshare rates climb during a rainstorm. Those prices move for everyone at once. Surveillance pricing is different: it uses what a company knows about one shopper, from the websites they visit to where they live and what they have bought before, to estimate how much that particular person is willing to pay.

The Council's bill draws the line there. It blocks companies from using browsing data to set different prices for different customers buying the same item.

Supporters point to real-world evidence that the practice is not theoretical. A Consumer Reports investigation released last December found that pricing experiments on the grocery delivery app Instacart showed different shoppers different prices for the same groceries, which the group warned may be inflating household food bills. For families already watching every dollar at the supermarket, the idea that a neighbor could pay less for the same carton of eggs strikes many as plainly unfair.

There is a moral principle underneath the policy debate. Scripture says "A just weight and balance are the Lord's" (Proverbs 16:11), and honest dealing has long been part of America's commercial tradition. Most shoppers expect the price on the shelf to be the price, period.

Not everyone agrees the city should step in. The tech-industry trade group NetChoice submitted testimony opposing a related Council proposal, Int. 891-A, which it described as a ban on dynamic pricing. At the state level, business groups have been lobbying Gov. Kathy Hochul to change a statewide surveillance pricing bill, the Times Union reported.

Their concerns deserve a fair hearing. Personalized offers are not always bad for customers. Loyalty discounts, first-time buyer coupons and targeted sales can lower prices for many shoppers, and businesses worry that broadly written rules could sweep in those benefits along with the abuses. Retailers also face a growing patchwork of city and state rules, and complying with different standards in different places adds costs that are often passed back to customers.

Small businesses have a particular stake. Many corner stores and local shops do not write their own pricing software; they buy it. When the rules change, those owners can be left trying to figure out whether a vendor's tools comply with a law they had no part in writing.

The question for New York, then, is not whether prices can ever vary. It is whether a company can quietly use a person's own data against them. On that narrower point, the Council came down firmly on the side of shoppers, by a lopsided margin.

The bill now heads to Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Its 44-5 margin is well above the two-thirds majority the 51-member Council would need to override a veto.

How the city enforces the law will matter as much as the vote itself. Shoppers will want to know how to report suspected violations, and businesses will want clear guidance on which discounts and promotions remain allowed. Those details will shape whether the ban protects families without burying store owners in paperwork.

Albany is moving on a parallel track. With business groups pressing Hochul to change the statewide bill, the city's action adds pressure on state leaders to settle the issue for all of New York. Consumer advocates are already holding the city up as a model, describing it as only the second in the country to take this step.

For now, New Yorkers have a simple rule they can understand: the price you see should not depend on what a company has learned about you. In an economy where so much of daily life runs through a phone, that is a protection a lot of families will welcome.