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... The FTC says the practice allows companies to charge different customers, different prices.

The agency is serving eight companies with a mandatory request for information " all companies it says advertise their AI and other tech tools along with a trove of customer information to target prices to individual customers.

The list includes Mastercard,
JPMorgan Chase, Accenture and consulting giant McKinsey. It also includes software firm Task, which counts McDonald's and Starbucks as clients; Revionics, which works with Home Depot, Tractor Supply

and grocery chain Hannaford; Bloomreach, which services FreshDirect, Total Wine and Puma; and Pros, which was named Microsoft's internet service vendor of the year this year.

"Firms that harvest Americans' personal data can put people's privacy at risk," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a news release. "Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices."

Kahn describes surveillance pricing as a "shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen." ...

So, when you go into a store, and the store's surveillance system notes the MAC address of you smartphone, the store will then consult databases to see how much they can get away with charging you for items.