Bipartisan Group of Senators Asks FTC to Reopen Surveillance Pricing Study
The FTC should reopen its study of surveillance pricing, a bipartisan group of senators wrote Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a letter released Thursday.
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The agency launched a Section 6(b) study in 2024 under Chair Lina Khan and released initial findings in the last days of the Biden administration. Ferguson, who voted against the release, closed the public comment period after coming into office. That decision prematurely ended the study, wrote Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va.; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.
They wrote that the FTC findings show “businesses are increasingly using personal data, such as demographic information, precise location, or even web browsing history, to target individual consumers with different prices for the same goods and services. Surveillance pricing builds upon not only the data that a company holds on a prospective customer, but also data purchased from shady data brokers.”
“We call on the Commission to re-open its market investigation into surveillance pricing and to take appropriate steps to protect consumers, including enforcement actions and rulemakings,” they said.
The agency didn’t comment.