Tag: Privacy

Tired of companies constantly updating their terms and conditions to train their AI with your data, recruit your personal info for their own ends, or charge ever-higher fees? On Thursday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation launched its 2026 Opt Out October guide, urging people to retake control of their data and devices.

If you’ve been wanting to change your privacy settings, stop social media from looking over your shoulder and avoid age verification requirements, this is the guide to start with. The EFF guide walks through all the toggles to flip and the platforms or services you should outright avoid, suggesting better alternatives where available.

The EFF notes on its blog that it will update the guide’s instructions and details if anything changes.

A representative from the EFF didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

What should I be opting out of?

EFF’s Opt Out October focuses on services that have been shown to treat your personal data poorly, and there are a lot of options.

My personal favorite is the AI tools section, which teaches you how to stop chatbots and platforms like Twitch and Snapchat from training on your data.

If you’re frustrated with social media’s use of your personal data, its obnoxious ads or its face-analyzing age verification, the guide also includes a list of alternative social media. If you want to move away from Chrome’s activity tracking or find a free, user-friendly design tool beyond Adobe, this is the place to stop and plan your exit. And if you’ve finally had it with Windows cramming ads and AI into everything, the guide discusses how to get started with Linux instead.

More privacy guides

Your social media and AI tools are good places to start, but there’s much more you can do for your personal privacy.

First, check out our list of the best VPN services this year, which offers plenty of options to encrypt your internet data, hide what country you’re connecting from and more.

Physical privacy is important, too. My guides on checking your home privacy online and wiping your home address off the internet are great places to get started.

If you have smart devices or just want to improve your home’s privacy and safety, I’ve also got tips on the best privacy habits for your home and the tech you may be using inside it.

You may also appreciate guides for the best privacy settings for specific devices you use. Here are changes you may want to make to Alexa to improve the voice assistant’s privacy, and here are settings for Ring security devices you may want to turn off when using its video doorbells or security cameras.

The debate over whether companies can set prices based on information they have about individual customers continues to grow. So-called surveillance pricing is in the news again on reports that Walmart patented technology for dynamic AI pricing about six months after filing for patents related to digital shelf labels.

Walmart, faced with a backlash, has been trying to assure the public that different customers will see the same digital shelf label prices and that its backend AI systems won’t engage in discriminatory pricing. “Your income, shopping history, urgency or what we think you could pay won’t change the price,” Walmart CEO John Furner wrote in a Sept. 25 letter to customers. “And whether you’re buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it’s never a reason to charge you more.”

Reached for comment, a representative for Walmart pointed CNET to the web page and letter to customers regarding pricing.

“Walmart does not set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won’t,” the representative said in an email. “A patent does not define Walmart’s pricing practices or intent.”

But the backlash may continue if customers aren’t convinced. One consumer advocate, Jeff Rossen, went as far as to suggest in a recent video that Walmart customers should leave their phones in the car when they shop in order to avoid being datamined.

Separately, but in a similar vein, McDonald’s has been the target of media coverage over its shift to AI systems that could mean different prices for different burgers at different restaurants for different customers. The company has bristled at some of that coverage, calling it “speculative and misinformed,” but it hasn’t stopped reporters from asking why burger prices can vary from neighborhood to neighborhood as part of the company’s technology makeover.

A representative for McDonald’s didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two of the largest American brands are now caught in the publicity crossfire over a topic that is drawing attention from lawmakers, the Federal Trade Commission and consumer advocacy groups: how companies are using AI to set prices and whether those practices may harm certain shoppers or even break the law.

Surveillance pricing, which is often conflated with the terms “dynamic pricing” or “algorithmic pricing,” is a broad term that includes something that’s been happening for decades: prices set automatically based on supply and demand (say, gasoline prices). For years, shoppers also heard about “surge pricing,” such as the cost of an Uber ride increasingly dramatically during spikes in activity or around big events.

But as AI has gone mainstream and more companies have access to an array of information collected about their customers — whether it’s through apps, loyalty programs or just website tracking — it’s increasingly likely that those companies can set different prices for different shoppers based on that information.

It may not always be personal: In June, a lawsuit was filed in California claiming gas stations were inflating the price of fuel illegally due to AI software used by thousands of gas stations. But lawmakers in states are concerned about more personalized dynamic pricing. This summer, New Jersey passed a law set to go into effect in 2027 banning the use of personal data to set prices; the law primarily targets grocery stores.

Last year, shoppers in New York began seeing warnings on product pages due to new laws mandating that customers let people know when shopping prices were set using personal data in an algorithm.

According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, for instance, personal data and market data are being used by retailers to determine the highest price a customer is willing to pay, leading to higher prices.

In a report released in August, the Consumer Federation of America called out retailers, hotel booking sites and airlines for engaging in practices like raising prices based on things like how much AI determined they’d be willing to pay, their income or their proximity to a store.

What the FTC is doing

The Federal Trade Commission said in August that it’s looking for public comment on policy around surveillance pricing, but it has implied that it may not be able to do much to stop companies by enforcing rules; its approach appears to be geared toward helping consumers be more aware of potential surveillance pricing and requesting that those engaging in this kind of pricing be transparent about it.

That’s not enough, according to consumer advocates like the CFA, which responded to the FTC’s proposal with a letter demanding it do more than promote transparency.

“Not even the most detailed disclosure of what information they’re using to hike your prices will change the fact that those prices are still going up,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of competition and market fairness at the CFA, told CNET in an email. The CFA argues in its letter that surveillance prices can be based on proxies for protected characteristics like race or age and are likely to disproportionately hurt low-income and working families who can’t easily comparison shop.

“To put it bluntly, the more vulnerable you are, the harder you stand to get hit,” Peterson-Cassin said. “If companies know you must have, for example, baby formula, they are more likely to charge you a higher price for it. “