So we took a family vacation recently and we had to drive halfway across America and what creeped me the fuck out was how we were getting such different prices on different phones while looking at the same hotel room on Priceline. For example I would look for a hotel in Chicago and find a room for a $180, then my cousin is also looking for a room on his phone and I look over and the same hotel room is $50-$70 cheaper. This kept on happening in every city we went to, like there was such a huge fluctuation between the prices one person would get on their phone and what someone else was getting. We noticed that the people with higher end Samsung phones were getting a much lower rate than those with cheaper phones. Have you ever experienced such price discrimination and is there really anyway to protect yourself from it? And do you think it’s ethical for companies to charge different rates for the same product? Should there be some legislation to protect consumers from this seeing as how AI is just going to make it easier for companies to price gouge consumers to the max.
I believe airlines do something similar and I agree it feels very scammy. They will do almost anything to and get someone to pay the maximum they are willing to pay for the same product. I imagine they do this the same way major tech companies like Google provide targeted ads and that is extensive data harvesting and of building a profile around you.
You can possibly protect yourself by using VPNs when making online purchases.
If they’re going by user agent, then a VPN won’t help. But user agents can be spoofed trivially, especially on a PC. If it’s geographical, you could try parking in a place with low average income and look up prices with the browser set to incognito/private.