On March 4th, Consumer Reports testified at a hearing in support of a bill that would ban surveillance pricing in Minnesota, HF 3794. CR also suggested amendments to the bill to make it work better for consumers and the marketplace writ large.
Surveillance pricing, also sometimes referred to as “personalized” pricing, is when a company uses personal data that they’ve gathered about a consumer—like data about their online search history, or inferences about family structure, health conditions, or income—to set the price of a product or determine the discount offered to a consumer.
HF 3794 prohibits the use of data related to a person’s characteristics, behavior, or biometrics to automatically and secretly inform the price or wage they are offered. It also includes thoughtful exemptions for commonly understood group discounts, for insurers relying on risk-relevant data, and for refusals to offer credit based on data covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
CR suggested several changes that would ensure consistency and protect discounts, including:
- Use the existing definition of “personal data” in Minnesota law to increase clarity, cover data related to personal devices, and ease compliance
- Add narrowly tailored exemption for behavior-based discounts
- Exempt pricing from ‘publication of procedures’ section
See the attached letter for more.