Comment by CircuitSeuss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CircuitSeuss | Hacker News Reader

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FTC study, Jan 2025 https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p246202_surveil...

Frequently sited investigative video journalism on grocery delivery prices (and more): https://youtu.be/osxr7xSxsGo

Airlines: https://fortune.com/2025/07/16/delta-moves-toward-eliminatin...

Insurance: https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/technology/gm-l...

Frankly, it’s everywhere— if a company is large enough, they will leverage consumer data to increase profits as much as the consumer will bear. There are many other examples, but I’ll just link you this as a jumping off point if you want to go further: https://epic.org/krogers-surveillance-pricing-harms-consumer...

Ongoing US house oversight committee investigation http://pallone.house.gov/media/press-releases/pallone-launch... https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Lette...

See also: https://lpeproject.org/blog/surveillance-pricing-exploiting-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_pricing

With respect, not one of those links supports what you actually said:

  > these data are increasingly used for targeted pricing practices

I personally think that “pricing” an insurance policy based on information obtained from data brokers shouldn’t be particularly controversial: individual pricing based on risk is exactly the point of insurance policies! Without personalized risk evaluation half of the insured population would heavily subsidize the other half, and you create serious adverse incentives.

The others are all about companies that seem to want to use this technique. And of course they want to. But several states either outlaw this outright or will do so soon. The Trump FTC has a draft rule which would prohibit it nationwide: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/08/...

This is such a toxic idea that I’m not particularly worried about it happening much in the real world.

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