The finding comes from the agency’s ongoing 6(b) surveillance pricing study, launched in July 2024 with orders to eight companies and expanded in January 2025 with a first round of published findings. In August 2026, the FTC advanced a proposed enforcement policy statement that would push retailers to disclose when they apply personalized pricing. What the study makes clear is that personalized pricing is not an edge case or a glitch. It is the operating model that a large part of the online retail economy already runs on.
The Eight Companies the FTC Actually Named
The 6(b) orders went to eight firms in July 2024: Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co. None of them are retailers. They are the middlemen: payment processors, pricing optimization software vendors, revenue management platforms, and consulting firms that build or advise on the systems retailers use to set individualized prices.
According to the FTC, these firms were selected because they “advertise their use of AI and other technologies along with historical and real-time customer information to target prices for individual consumers.” That distinction matters. The retailer whose site you’re on may not be doing anything visible. The pricing engine behind the scenes is what decides what your screen shows.
What Data Actually Feeds the Price
The FTC’s January 2025 initial findings describe a wide range of consumer signals used to model an individualized price. The specific categories named in the FTC’s own summary include location data, browsing and purchase history, device information, and credit background. Some pricing systems also incorporate demographic inferences, engagement patterns on the retailer’s own site, and third-party data purchased from brokers.
Once these signals are aggregated, the pricing engine produces a targeted price for a specific visitor. Two people opening the same product page at the same moment can see two different prices, and neither has any way to know that the other price exists.
What the FTC’s August 2026 Proposal Would Change
The proposed enforcement policy statement, floated in late August 2026, would require retailers to disclose when a shown price has been personalized. It stops short of banning the practice. The FTC’s framing treats disclosure as a floor: consumers should at minimum know that the price on their screen was calculated for them individually rather than posted as a uniform rate.
Retail and adtech industry groups have pushed back, arguing that surveillance pricing terminology overstates what most companies do in practice. The proposed statement is not final. It is an enforcement signal about how the FTC plans to read existing consumer protection law against pricing personalization.
Cut One Signal Feeding the Price
Where a VPN Actually Helps, and Where It Doesn’t
Straightforward on the limits: a VPN does not change the price you get on a site that keys its pricing to your account, your saved payment method’s country, or your logged-in purchase history. If a retailer already knows who you are, it prices to you. Where a VPN does reduce the signal available is on the IP-based layer that feeds most anonymous browsing sessions.
Location inferred from your IP address is a documented input in the FTC’s findings. NordVPN routes your traffic through a server in the country and region of your choice, which means the pricing engine sees the exit server’s IP rather than your home network. Threat Protection Pro, included in the higher tiers, blocks the trackers and ad-tech beacons that many pricing systems use to correlate a visitor across sites. Neither replaces basic hygiene: browsing in a private window or a fresh profile, without a logged-in retailer account, removes the identifiers the pricing engine relies on most. NordVPN’s placement near the top of most best VPN guides tracks this kind of layered posture rather than a single feature.
NordVPN Basic at $3.49 per Month
NordVPN’s Basic plan is available at $3.49/month, which works out to $94.23 billed once for 27 months of service (24 + 3 free). That is a 69% discount off the standard rate, with annual renewal at $139.08/year, cancelable at any time. The plan covers up to 10 devices with apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, browsers, and router installation. Threat Protection Pro sits in the Advanced and Ultra tiers rather than in Basic.
Every plan is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, refunded through 24/7 chat support within 5 to 10 business days.