FTC Orders Nine Companies to Report on Personalized Pricing

FTC Orders Nine Companies to Report on Personalized Pricing and Worker Pay

The Federal Trade Commission issued compulsory Section 6(b) orders on October 28, 2026 to nine airlines, rideshare platforms, delivery apps and retailers, demanding records on whether they use personal data to set individual consumer prices and individual gig worker pay. This is a study, not an enforcement action.

Information last verified on October 29, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: Orders to File a Special Report issued October 28, 2026 under FTC Matter No. P246202. Responses are due 45 days after service. In this matter, no complaint has been filed, no recipient has been charged with a violation, and the Commission has made no finding that any recipient broke any law as of October 29, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses the FTC's federal Section 6(b) study authority and the US state privacy and worker-data laws that bear on data-driven pricing and pay. It does not address antitrust claims over algorithmic price coordination among competitors, airline fare regulation by the Department of Transportation, or non-US law. For a side-by-side of the state statutes referenced here, see our US State Privacy Laws Comparison Chart and Tracker.

What Happened

On October 28, 2026 the Federal Trade Commission issued an Order to File a Special Report to each of nine companies under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(b). The recipients are Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart. The Commission announced the orders the same day and said the vote to approve issuing the special orders was 2-0. The Commission currently has two sitting members, Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson and Commissioner Mark R. Meador, both of whom appear in the caption of the order and of the authorizing resolution.

Three documents define the action. The resolution, titled Resolution Directing the Use of Compulsory Process Regarding Use of Personal Data to Set Prices and Compensation, is dated October 28, 2026, carries FTC Matter No. P246202, and was signed by Secretary April J. Tabor by direction of the Commission. It states the nature and scope of the matter as compiling information about firms' use of personal data to set different prices and different compensation, pursuant to Section 6(b), and it cites Sections 6, 9, 10 and 20 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46, 49, 50 and 57b-1, together with the Commission's Rules of Practice at 16 C.F.R. 1.1 et seq. The order itself, signed by Chairman Ferguson by direction of the Commission and also dated October 28, 2026, runs 23 numbered specifications across 15 pages with two attachments. The cover letter, signed by Secretary Tabor, asks each recipient to confer by telephone no later than 14 days after service.

The Commission's announcement framed the subject as opaque methodology rather than proven misconduct:

"We intend to scrutinize the opaque methodology that some companies in these industries may be using to determine how much consumers pay or how much gig workers are paid for the same product or service," Source: Statement of FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson, FTC press release, Personalized Pricing and Compensation Inquiry, October 28, 2026

The same statement closes on the worker half of the inquiry: "Workers also deserve to know if their compensation is affected by how companies use their personal data."

Two points of precision are worth flagging. First, the announcement describes the recipients collectively as nine major airlines, ride-sharing companies and food-delivery firms, which does not account for Target and Walmart; the nine-company list is the authoritative enumeration. Second, the matter number P246202 is the same number under which the Commission published its January 17, 2025 surveillance pricing staff perspective. That earlier study used 6(b) orders issued in July 2024 to intermediaries rather than to the businesses that set consumer prices, and the staff reviewed documents from Mastercard, Accenture, PROS, Bloomreach, Revionics and McKinsey & Co. The Commission released that staff perspective on a 3-2 vote, with then-Commissioners Ferguson and Holyoak dissenting. The new orders are the same matter reaching past the middlemen to the sellers.

What the Orders Actually Demand

The press release paraphrases. The order specifies. Reading the specifications is the only way to see the size of the request.

The time period. Unless a specification says otherwise, the applicable period runs from January 1, 2023 until the date of full and complete compliance. One specification, number 20, reaches back further, to any analysis, research, study, A/B test, investigation, report, projection or presentation proposed, pending or completed since January 1, 2021.

The consumer-pricing core. Specification 7 requires each company to describe in detail every Methodology that uses Personal Information as an input to adjust or set pricing. For each product or service, that means naming every pricing component the methodology touches, naming every tool or software used to apply it, naming every input and stating whether that input's value varies by individual consumer, laying out all the steps the methodology takes, explaining how missing input values are handled, and describing when a human modifies or overrides the machine's output. Specification 9 then asks for sales counts and revenue broken out by whether the methodology was used. Specification 10 asks how the company prioritizes consumers' requests for the product or service, and what metric or standard assigns that priority.

The worker core. Specifications 11 and 14 mirror Specification 7 on the labor side and split it in two. Specification 11 covers Offer Assignment, which the order defines as the outcomes of deciding which workers are offered which jobs, including the order or priority of offers and whether jobs are made visible to or hidden from a given worker. Specification 14 covers Compensation, and subsection 14(d) asks for detail sufficient to determine how the price paid by the consumer is split between the worker's pay and the company's revenue.

Segmentation, provenance and resale. Specification 17 asks how the company divides consumers or workers into groups that do not receive identical methodologies, and what factors assign a person to each group. Specification 18 asks where each tool, input and category of personal information came from, naming any third-party supplier and any testing or validation performed. Specification 19 asks whether the company licenses or sells those same tools, inputs or personal information onward to third parties.

Disclosure. Specification 22 is the one most likely to feed a later enforcement theory. It asks for the exact wording of each disclosure made to consumers or workers about these practices, the location of each disclosure including the precise URL, and the dates each was made. Specification 23(e) requires copies of every unique version of those disclosures, and for digital content specifies screenshots covering mouseovers, hyperlinked information, pop-up windows, orphan pages reachable only by URL, and all audio and video.

Costs and benefits. Specification 21 asks each company to describe the extent to which each methodology lets additional consumers buy, whether it raises or lowers prices paid, whether it expands worker supply, and whether it raises or lowers worker pay. That is the Commission asking the companies to brief both sides of the unfairness balance described in 15 U.S.C. 45(n).

Definitions do the heavy lifting. Personal Information is defined across 24 lettered categories running from name and address through geolocation, biometric data, video and audio, health data, racial or ethnic origin, political beliefs or voting record, religion, sexual orientation, household and pregnancy status, devices, and transaction and browsing history, and then expressly including a consumer's willingness to pay for a product or service and a worker's willingness to accept a job, plus anything inferred or derived from any of the above. Methodology covers any formula, algorithm, code, model, or statistical or machine-learning technique, and expressly includes grouping or segmenting consumers in a way that produces different prices for the same product. The order defines Super Intelligence, abbreviated SI, as a machine-based technology or system that for a given set of human-defined objectives makes predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. Specification 3 even asks for employee headcount in the division working on Super Intelligence.

Worker is a narrower term than it looks. The order defines Worker as a natural person who performs a service in exchange for compensation, whether described as an employee, independent contractor, gig worker or otherwise, but then excludes any employee of the company who is compensated through a fixed salary or compensated hourly on a fixed schedule. The Commission's own announcement notes that airlines typically pay employees a transparent salary or fixed hourly wages. On the face of these definitions, the compensation specifications have substantial scope at the rideshare and delivery recipients and limited scope at the airlines.

What the orders do not seek. Specification 23 expressly directs recipients not to produce records pertaining to an individual customer or subscriber, and not to produce the contents of communications between customers or subscribers. A standing notice in the order states that it does not seek information whose disclosure is prohibited by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2701 to 2713. Confidential or privileged commercial and financial information will be reported by the Commission only on an aggregate or anonymous basis, consistent with Sections 6(f) and 21(d) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f) and 57b-2(d), and a submission marked confidential will not be disclosed without ten days' advance notice. Withheld privileged material requires a searchable log meeting 16 C.F.R. 2.11(a) through (c).

What Section 6(b) Authority Is, and What It Is Not

Section 6 of the FTC Act, codified at 15 U.S.C. 46, lists the Commission's powers apart from enforcement. Subsection (a) is the investigative power to gather and compile information about the organization, business, conduct, practices and management of companies whose business affects commerce. Subsection (b) is the reporting power: the Commission may require, by general or special orders, that companies file annual or special reports or written answers to specific questions, furnishing such information as the Commission may require. Those answers are made under oath, or otherwise, as the Commission may prescribe, and must be filed within such reasonable period as the Commission prescribes. That statutory text is the whole source of the 45-day deadline and the sworn-subscription requirement in these orders.

Three features of that authority matter to a reader trying to size up this news.

It is untethered from a violation. Nothing in 15 U.S.C. 46(b) requires reason to believe the recipient did anything wrong. The Commission's resolution describes the purpose as compiling information, and its announcement describes 6(b) as authority to conduct wide-ranging studies that do not have a specific law enforcement purpose. A recipient of a 6(b) order is a study subject. A recipient of a Section 5 complaint is a respondent. These nine companies are the former.

Non-compliance is enforced through a court, not by the agency alone. Under 15 U.S.C. 49, the clause that reaches an order like this one is the mandamus provision: on application of the Attorney General at the Commission's request, a district court has jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus commanding compliance with the subchapter or with any order of the Commission made under it. The same section's aid-of-court and contempt clauses are written for disobedience to a subpoena, which a special report order is not. The authorizing resolution separately authorizes the filing or continuation of actions to enforce the compulsory process. Section 10, at 15 U.S.C. 50, adds a civil forfeiture for each day a required special report remains unfiled once a failure has continued for thirty days after notice of default, recoverable in a civil suit brought in the name of the United States. The statute sets that forfeiture at $100 per day; the Commission's inflation-adjustment rule at 16 C.F.R. 1.98(f) raises the operative maximum to $698 per day for penalties assessed after January 17, 2025. Willfully making a false entry or statement of fact in a required report is a separate offense carrying a fine of not less than $1,000 and not more than $5,000, imprisonment for up to three years, or both. The order states the point plainly in a single closing line: penalties may be imposed under applicable provisions of federal law for failure to file special reports or for filing false reports.

The jurisdictional carve-outs are not the same as for enforcement. Both 15 U.S.C. 46(a) and 46(b) exclude banks, the savings and loan institutions described in 15 U.S.C. 57a(f)(3), the federal credit unions described in 57a(f)(4), and common carriers subject to the Act to regulate commerce. The Commission's Section 5 enforcement power at 15 U.S.C. 45(a)(2) carves out that same set and then adds a category Section 6 does not list: air carriers and foreign air carriers subject to part A of subtitle VII of title 49. Unfair and deceptive practices by air carriers are instead the Secretary of Transportation's province under 49 U.S.C. 41712. On the face of these two provisions, the study power the Commission used here extends to the three airline recipients even though the enforcement power at Section 5 does not reach air carriers in air transportation. That is a reading of the statutory text, not a prediction about any future proceeding.

What the Law Currently Requires of a Company That Prices by Personal Data

There is no general federal prohibition on personalized pricing, and the Commission says so itself. Its proposed enforcement policy statement of August 19, 2026, document P034101, states that Congress has not given the Commission the authority to prohibit personalized pricing in all circumstances. The theory it advances instead is a disclosure theory under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which forbids unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.

The proposed statement's core proposition is that where consumers reasonably expect that prices will not vary based on their personal data, a business that personalizes prices should clearly and conspicuously disclose not just that the price is personalized but also the basis for the personalization and the types of data used, and that failing to make those disclosures is likely to constitute an unfair or deceptive act or practice in violation of Section 5. It identifies two distinct routes. On deception, it reasons that representing a price as static or widely offered when it is in fact personalized, or failing to disclose personalization where a consumer reasonably believes the price is static, is likely material because an uninformed consumer cannot take the avoidance steps available to an informed one, such as using a virtual private network or private browsing, switching retailers, or declining the transaction. On unfairness, it applies the 15 U.S.C. 45(n) test: the higher price may be substantial injury, and it may not be reasonably avoidable when the fact or nature of personalization has been concealed. The statement expressly declines to take any position on whether some personalized pricing practices are unfair even when fully disclosed.

The statement also reaches the data side. It says businesses that collect, use or disclose consumers' personal data for the purpose of personalized pricing without adequate disclosures or without obtaining consent may violate Section 5, and that businesses setting personalized prices without sufficiently verifying consent to the collection of that data for that purpose may violate Section 5. Its non-exhaustive examples include a food delivery company quoting a higher price to consumers whose data suggests they cannot leave home to buy food, a grocery chain charging a delivery customer more for milk based on data showing several children in the household, and a rideshare company charging more for transport to a medical facility based on data suggesting a life-threatening condition. The statement is explicit that it confers no rights, does not bind the FTC or the public, and that in any enforcement action the Commission must still prove a violation of an existing statutory or regulatory requirement. The Commission voted 2-0 to publish it for comment on August 19, 2026 under docket FTC-2026-1057; the comment period closed September 25, 2026 after a seven-day extension announced September 3, 2026. It remains a proposal.

State law is where enforceable pricing-disclosure duties currently exist, and there are only a few of them. New York's Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act, codified at General Business Law 349-a, took effect November 10, 2025. It requires an entity that sets a price using personalized algorithmic pricing, and that advertises or publishes that price to a New York consumer using personal data specific to that consumer, to include a clear and conspicuous disclosure reading: THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA. The statute defines personalized algorithmic pricing as dynamic pricing set by an algorithm that uses personal data, exempts insurers and Gramm-Leach-Bliley financial institutions, and carves location data out of the personal data definition where a for-hire vehicle or transportation network company vehicle uses it solely to calculate a fare from mileage and trip duration. Enforcement runs through the Attorney General, who must first send a cease and desist letter with a cure period before applying for an injunction; a court may impose a civil penalty of not more than $1,000 per violation. New York Attorney General Letitia James already used that framework against one of the nine FTC order recipients: on January 8, 2026 she sent Instacart a letter questioning whether its disclosures complied, saying they were buried on a page reachable only through fine print rather than displayed near product prices.

Connecticut has a surveillance pricing provision too, but it does not bind anyone yet. Its history is tangled enough that we tracked it separately in our account of the Connecticut surveillance pricing delay: the surviving version, Public Act 26-130 Section 11, does not take effect until July 1, 2027.

A broader New York ban has passed the legislature but is not law. The One Fair Price Act, S8623B and A9349B, would prohibit surveillance pricing outright. The Senate record shows it passed both houses on June 4, 2026 and, as of October 29, 2026, has not been delivered to or signed by the Governor. It should not be described as a requirement on anyone today.

The Worker Compensation Half Is a Different Legal Problem

Specifications 11 and 14 ask questions that consumer privacy law was not built to answer, and the gap is structural rather than accidental.

Most state comprehensive privacy statutes define their protected class so as to exclude workers. Virginia's Consumer Data Protection Act defines Consumer as a natural person who is a resident of the Commonwealth acting only in an individual or household context, and states that it does not include a natural person acting in a commercial or employment context, Va. Code 59.1-575. Colorado goes further and spells out the exclusions: its Consumer does not include an individual acting in a commercial or employment context, as a job applicant, or as a beneficiary of someone acting in an employment context, Colo. Rev. Stat. 6-1-1303(6), enacted by Senate Bill 21-190. A Lyft driver asking how the platform decided her per-trip rate is, under those statutes, outside the definition of the person the statute protects. The data in Specification 14 is worker data, and in most states the comprehensive privacy law simply does not reach it. Our guide to employer obligations for worker data, state by state walks through what does apply.

California is the exception, and it is squarely on point. The CCPA regulations approved by the Office of Administrative Law on September 22, 2025 and effective January 1, 2026 treat an independent contractor as a consumer with CCPA rights, and they define Significant decision to include employment or independent contracting opportunities or compensation. The regulation then unpacks that phrase to cover hiring, allocation or assignment of work for employees, and salary, hourly or per-assignment compensation, incentive compensation such as a bonus, or another benefit. Read next to the FTC order, the compensation branch tracks Specification 14 closely; the work-allocation branch is written for employees, so it does not map as cleanly onto Specification 11's Offer Assignment for independent contractors. Where a business uses automated decisionmaking technology to make such a decision, the regulations require a pre-use notice and a right to access information about the technology. The right to opt out is narrower than it first appears. Section 7221(b) lifts the opt-out where the business instead provides an appeal to a human reviewer with authority to overturn the decision, and Section 7221(b)(3) lifts it altogether for allocation-of-work and compensation decisions where the business uses the technology solely for that purpose and the technology works for that purpose and does not unlawfully discriminate on protected characteristics. A platform that sets per-trip pay by algorithm alone can therefore owe a pre-use notice and an access response without owing any opt-out at all. Businesses already using the technology for a significant decision must comply no later than January 1, 2027. The regulations also state that a significant decision does not include advertising to a consumer, which keeps the obligation aimed at consequential decisions rather than ad targeting. Our explainer on automated decision-making and privacy obligations covers the mechanics.

Two limits keep this from being a general answer for gig workers. First, it is one state. Second, the required disclosure runs to the individual worker on request, not to the public, so it does not produce the aggregate picture the FTC is trying to build. Nothing in the orders themselves creates any new right for a driver or courier, and nothing in them entitles a worker to the companies' responses.

What Rights a Consumer Actually Has Today

The honest answer is narrower than the headlines suggest.

The state comprehensive privacy laws give consumers a right to opt out of three specific kinds of processing. Virginia's version, Va. Code 59.1-577(A)(5), is representative: a consumer may opt out of processing for purposes of targeted advertising, the sale of personal data, or profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning the consumer. Colorado's Senate Bill 21-190 grants the same three and lets a consumer authorize another person to exercise the opt-out on their behalf, including through a technology indicating the consumer's intent to opt out such as a web link, browser setting or browser extension. Our guide to using the Colorado Privacy Act's consumer rights explains how those requests work in practice.

The question is whether a price fits. Willingness-to-pay modelling plainly falls inside the statutory definition of profiling: Virginia defines it as any form of automated processing of personal data to evaluate, analyze or predict personal aspects relating to a person's economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behavior, location or movements. But the opt-out does not attach to all profiling. It attaches only to profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects, and both states define that phrase by enumeration. Virginia lists the provision or denial of financial and lending services, housing, insurance, education enrollment, criminal justice, employment opportunities, health care services, or access to basic necessities such as food and water. Colorado lists financial or lending services, housing, insurance, education enrollment or opportunity, criminal justice, employment opportunities, health-care services, or access to essential goods or services.

An airline fare, a surge multiplier on a rideshare, or a markup on a delivered burrito is not on either list. The closest fit is the last item in each, and the two are not worded the same: Virginia's access to basic necessities, such as food and water, is narrower than Colorado's access to essential goods or services. Whether charging a grocery-delivery customer more for milk is a decision producing a similarly significant effect under Colorado's phrasing is an open question that no court or regulator has resolved on the record we reviewed. It is a genuine argument, not a settled right. Treating these opt-outs as a pricing opt-out overstates them.

What a consumer can do today is narrower and real. In New York, a personalized price advertised using that consumer's personal data must carry the statutory disclosure, and the Attorney General takes reports of missing disclosures. In every comprehensive-privacy state, the opt-outs for sale of personal data and targeted advertising do reduce the inputs available downstream, and access and deletion rights let a consumer see and challenge some of what a company holds. The Commission's own proposed policy statement points at self-help: a virtual private network, a private browsing session, or a different retailer. None of that is a right to a non-personalized price.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The structural news here is not that the FTC is interested in surveillance pricing. It said so in July 2024 and published staff findings in January 2025. The news is which door it knocked on. The 2024 orders went to intermediaries, and the Commission's current announcement says that approach left the agency without information about actual pricing decisions. Issuing orders under the same matter number to the sellers themselves is the Commission correcting the aim of its own study. Whatever the responses show, the record it builds will be about the firms that set prices rather than the vendors who sell the tooling.

Two specifications do work out of proportion to their numbering. Specification 22 asks for the exact wording, precise URL and date of every disclosure. Read against an August 2026 proposed policy statement whose entire theory is that inadequate disclosure of personalized pricing is likely an unfair or deceptive act under Section 5, that specification collects precisely the evidence that theory would require. Specification 21, which asks each company to brief whether its methodology raises or lowers prices and whether it expands or contracts worker pay, collects the countervailing-benefits half of the 15 U.S.C. 45(n) unfairness test. The order is not an enforcement action, and nothing in it commits the Commission to bringing one. But a study that gathers the elements of a stated legal theory is a different thing from a study with no theory behind it, and the Commission published the theory ten weeks before it issued the orders.

The worker half is the less-covered and more legally interesting side. Consumer pricing has at least a developing framework: a proposed federal policy statement, an operative New York disclosure statute, a Connecticut statute waiting on July 1, 2027, and state opt-outs that arguably stretch to essential goods. Worker pay has almost none of that. Virginia and Colorado write workers out of their definitions of Consumer. California's automated decisionmaking rules are the only regime we found that names independent contracting compensation as a significant decision, and they do not require compliance until January 1, 2027. New York's pricing statute defines Consumer as someone seeking goods or services for personal, family or household use, which does not describe a driver accepting an offer. Specification 11's Offer Assignment definition, which asks whether jobs are hidden from a given worker, describes a mechanism for which we found no general disclosure duty in the federal and state provisions reviewed here. If the responses show that offer visibility and pay vary with individual worker data, the gap will be documented in the Commission's own record before any statute addresses it.

Finally, the airline inclusion is worth watching on the law rather than the facts. Section 6 does not exempt air carriers; Section 5 does, and 49 U.S.C. 41712 puts air-carrier unfair and deceptive practices with the Secretary of Transportation. A study record about airline fare personalization built by the FTC would therefore sit with an agency whose Section 5 authority does not reach the carriers that produced it. Factors agencies consider in that situation include referral and information-sharing with the agency that does hold the authority. We take no position on what either agency will do.

How This Affects You

Nothing in these orders changes what any company may charge you or pay you, and nothing in them gives you a claim. The practical implications are general.

If you are a consumer, the operative protections are the ones that already existed. In New York, a personalized price advertised to you using your personal data must carry the statutory disclosure, and a missing one can be reported to the Attorney General. In a comprehensive-privacy state, your opt-outs for sale and targeted advertising, and your access and deletion rights, are exercised with the company, not with the FTC. The FTC does not resolve individual pricing complaints, and a 6(b) study does not produce refunds.

If you are a gig worker for one of the recipients, the orders do not entitle you to the company's responses, which will be treated as confidential commercial information and reported only in aggregate or anonymous form under 15 U.S.C. 46(f). In California, the automated decisionmaking rules provide a pre-use notice and an access path for significant decisions including per-assignment compensation, with compliance required by January 1, 2027. The opt-out can be displaced, including by Section 7221(b)(3) where the technology is used solely to allocate work or set compensation.

If you work at a company that prices or assigns work using personal data, the disclosure specifications are the ones to read closely. They ask for exact wording, exact placement and exact dates, which is a records question before it is a legal one.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers federal FTC Act authority and the California, Colorado, Connecticut, New York and Virginia provisions named above, and reflects sources verified on October 29, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• US State Privacy Laws Comparison Chart and Tracker
• Connecticut surveillance pricing law delayed to July 1, 2027
• Employee Data Privacy: Employer Obligations by State
• AI and Data Privacy: Legal Requirements
• Colorado Privacy Act Consumer Rights and How to Use Them

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Last updated: 2026-10-29. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-29.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a Section 6(b) order mean the FTC has accused these nine companies of breaking the law?

No. A Section 6(b) order under 15 U.S.C. 46(b) is a compulsory demand for information used to conduct a study. It is not a complaint, not a settlement, and not a finding of liability. The authorizing resolution describes the purpose as compiling information, and the FTC's announcement describes 6(b) as authority for wide-ranging studies that do not have a specific law enforcement purpose. As of October 29, 2026 no complaint has been filed against any recipient in this matter.

Which nine companies received the orders, and when are the responses due?

Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart. Each has 45 days from the date the order is served to file a sworn Special Report, and must contact FTC counsel within 14 days of service to confer about scope and format and to identify any requested information not in its possession, custody or control.

What happens if a company does not respond?

Under 15 U.S.C. 49 the clause that reaches an order like this one is the mandamus provision: on application of the Attorney General at the Commission's request, a federal district court has jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus commanding compliance with the subchapter or with any order of the Commission made under it. That section's aid-of-court and contempt clauses are written for disobedience to a subpoena, which a special report order is not. Under 15 U.S.C. 50 a company that fails to file a required special report forfeits $100 per day for each day the failure continues after thirty days' notice of default, a maximum the Commission's inflation adjustment at 16 C.F.R. 1.98(f) raises to $698 per day for penalties assessed after January 17, 2025, and willfully making a false entry in a required report is a separate offense carrying a fine of $1,000 to $5,000, up to three years' imprisonment, or both.

Is personalized pricing illegal in the United States?

Not as a general matter. The FTC's own proposed enforcement policy statement of August 19, 2026 says Congress has not given the Commission authority to prohibit personalized pricing in all circumstances. The theory the Commission has proposed instead is that failing to disclose clearly and conspicuously that a price is personalized, the basis of the personalization and the types of data used is likely an unfair or deceptive act under Section 5 of the FTC Act. That statement is a proposal for comment, not a rule, and the Commission states that in any enforcement action it must still prove a violation of an existing statutory or regulatory requirement.

Does any state require a company to tell me a price was personalized?

New York does. General Business Law 349-a, effective November 10, 2025, requires an entity that sets a price using personalized algorithmic pricing and advertises it to a New York consumer using that consumer's personal data to include the disclosure THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA. Insurers and Gramm-Leach-Bliley financial institutions are exempt, and location data a for-hire or transportation network vehicle uses solely to calculate a fare from mileage and trip duration is excluded from the personal data definition. Connecticut has a surveillance pricing provision in Public Act 26-130 Section 11, but it does not take effect until July 1, 2027.

Can I use a state privacy law to opt out of being priced by my personal data?

Generally not directly. State comprehensive privacy laws give an opt-out from targeted advertising, sale of personal data, and profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects. Both Virginia and Colorado define that last phrase by listing categories such as lending, housing, insurance, education, criminal justice, employment, health care and access to basic or essential goods and services. Retail and transport prices are not on either list, although Colorado's reference to access to essential goods or services is broader than Virginia's reference to basic necessities such as food and water. Whether grocery pricing falls inside that phrase is unresolved. The opt-outs for sale and targeted advertising do reduce the data available downstream.

What is the FTC asking about gig worker pay specifically?

Specification 11 asks about Offer Assignment, defined as the outcomes of deciding which workers are offered which jobs, including the order of offers and whether jobs are made visible to or hidden from a given worker. Specification 14 asks about Compensation, including which components are set by a methodology, which inputs vary by individual worker, and how the price the consumer pays is divided between worker pay and company revenue. The order's definition of Worker covers employees, independent contractors and gig workers but excludes employees paid a fixed salary or paid hourly on a fixed schedule.

Does a gig worker have any right to know how an algorithm sets their pay?

In most states, no. Virginia and Colorado both exclude people acting in an employment or commercial context from the definition of Consumer, so their privacy rights do not reach worker data. California is the exception: its CCPA regulations, effective January 1, 2026, treat independent contractors as consumers and define a significant decision to include independent contracting compensation, including per-assignment and incentive compensation. Businesses using automated decisionmaking technology for such decisions must comply by January 1, 2027, providing a pre-use notice and responding to requests to access the technology. The opt-out is narrower: Section 7221(b) lifts it where the business offers an appeal to a human reviewer with authority to overturn the decision, and Section 7221(b)(3) lifts it for allocation-of-work and compensation decisions where the business uses the technology solely for that purpose and the technology works for that purpose and does not unlawfully discriminate on protected characteristics.

Will the FTC publish what these companies turn over?

The announcement does not say whether or when the Commission will publish a report. The order states that confidential or privileged commercial and financial information will be reported only on an aggregate or anonymous basis consistent with Sections 6(f) and 21(d) of the FTC Act, and that a submission marked confidential will not be disclosed without first giving the company ten days' notice. The Commission's practice in the earlier phase of this matter was to publish a staff perspective; it did so in January 2025 on a 3-2 vote.