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The Michigan House of Representatives has advanced two bills that would ban surveillance pricing, passing them on June 25, 2026 and referring them to the Committee on Economic and Community Development before they move to the state Senate. Surveillance pricing is the practice of using a shopper's personal data to set an individual price, and Michigan is now one of several states weighing whether to outlaw it.

What surveillance pricing is

Surveillance pricing means charging different people different prices for the same product based on what a company knows about them. Instead of one shelf price for everyone, a retailer uses personal data to estimate how much a given shopper is willing to pay, then shows that shopper a price tuned to that guess. The inputs can include your precise location, your browsing and purchase history, and even fine-grained signals like your mouse movements on a page or the items you left unpurchased in an online cart.

That is different from an ordinary sale or from old-fashioned dynamic pricing, where a price moves with supply and demand for everyone at once. Surveillance pricing is aimed at you specifically, built from a profile of your behaviour, which is what turns a pricing tactic into a data-privacy question.

What the Michigan bills would do

The two Michigan House bills passed on June 25 and were referred to the Committee on Economic and Community Development before advancing to the Senate. Representative Rylee Linting, a co-sponsor, framed the aim plainly: "Companies shouldn't be able to use our personal data to quietly charge one customer more than another for the exact same product."

• Surveillance pricing = an individual price set from your personal data, not one shelf price for all
• Michigan's House passed two bills to ban it on June 25, 2026; they now go to the Senate
• Companion Senate bills were introduced May 20 by Sens. McMorrow and Cherry
• Inputs can include location, browsing and purchase history, mouse movements and abandoned carts
• Already used by airlines, rideshares, online retailers and hotels, and spreading to groceries
• Protect yourself now: share less data, limit tracking, be cautious with loyalty programs

The House bills track companion legislation introduced in the state Senate on May 20, 2026 by Senators Mallory McMorrow and John Cherry, which targets surveillance pricing for e-commerce and dynamic pricing for retail stores. "Between the price of gas and rising utility bills, Michiganders are already having a hard time staying afloat, and companies' exploitative pricing tactics are only making it worse," said Senator Cherry.

Why this is a privacy issue, not just a price one

The reason this belongs in a privacy conversation, and not only a consumer-price one, is that the raw material is your personal data. A surveillance price is only possible because a company has built a detailed picture of who you are and how you behave, then used it against your own wallet. The more it can watch, the more precisely it can price.

The tactic is not hypothetical or limited to one sector. Individualized and dynamic pricing already show up with airlines, rideshare apps, online retailers and hotels, and they are creeping into grocery shopping as stores add digital shelf labels and richer loyalty data. That spread is part of why state lawmakers are paying attention now.

What happens next

For now nothing has changed in law: the House bills move to the Senate for review, where they can be amended, passed or stalled, and the companion Senate bills follow their own path. Michigan's push is one of a growing set of state-level efforts, so the outcome here is worth watching as a signal of where this fight is heading.

How to protect yourself now

You do not have to wait for a law to make yourself a harder target. Sharing less data is the direct defence: limit location sharing, clear cookies or browse in a private or hardened browser, sign out of shopping accounts when you compare prices, and be wary of loyalty programs that trade discounts for a complete record of what you buy. Our guide on how to stop websites from tracking you covers the practical steps, and our explainer on digital price tags and surveillance pricing gives the background on how this reached the checkout.