Social scoring of customers is banned

Social scoring of customers with AI is banned under Article 5(1)(c) of the EU AI Act — and that ban already applies to private retailers, not only governments. Lens: online consumer-goods retailer.

If you build a long-lived “customer quality” or trust score from browsing, returns, complaints, or inferred personality traits, and then use it to deny offers, throttle support, or worsen terms in a different context (or in a way that is disproportionate to the behaviour), you are in prohibited-practice territory. Purpose-bound evaluation for a lawful, specific use (for example, ordinary fraud checks or a transparent loyalty programme) is different; cross-context score-and-punish systems are the red flag. Audit any multi-signal customer ranking tools now — the prohibition has been in force since 2 February 2025.