Dive Brief:

• Porsche launched a privacy center in its My Porsche portal last week, allowing customers to select what data they want to share with the sports car maker and how the company may use it.
• Porsche Privacy Center splits data approval into three categories: product improvement (data used to develop products), individual support of customers (data used to contact customers with offers) and third-party data sharing (data used for “services that offer added value for Porsche drivers,” according to a press release.
• As automakers boost digital features, their data collection practices have come under greater scrutiny, with California regulators investigating whether they are abiding by the state’s law when obtaining and using consumer information.

Dive Insight:

Porsche’s Privacy Center comes on the heels of a Mozilla Foundation report released in September that inspected the privacy and security policies of 25 car brands, concluding that cars were “the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.” 

“All new cars today are privacy nightmares on wheels that collect huge amounts of personal information," report coauthor Jen Caltrider said in a statement.

Porsche was not profiled in the Mozilla report, but by providing these data-sharing options to customers in its privacy center, it addresses several of the issues raised in the research. 

Researchers found that each car company collected more data than necessary to operate the car and 84% shared or sold data to third parties. The vast majority (92%) of the profiled car companies reviewed gave customers “little to no control over their personal data.” Only two — Europe-based companies Renault and Dacia, both subject to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation — allowed customers to delete their personal data.

“[I]t seems that the Fords, Audis, and Toyotas of the world have shifted their focus from selling cars to selling data,” report coauthor Misha Rykov said in a statement.

While the U.S. has typically lagged behind much of the world on data protection laws, lawmakers have looked into how to address these issues. California regulators, for example, following the footsteps of the EU, are currently examining whether automakers are adhering to state privacy laws with their internet-connected vehicles.

For Porsche, its newest rollout is part of an established privacy strategy to ensure customers “have control over their data and know what is being done with it,” according to a press release. The company has been working on more robust privacy measures since at least 2021 when it approved 18 targeted goals. In 2022, the company released its “privacy mode” to allow drivers to press a button on the dashboard to give or withdraw data sharing consent.

"It's not our business to sell data and to make money out of the data of our customers,” Christian Völkel, Porsche's chief privacy officer, told The Wall Street Journal in May 2022. “It's our business aim to make better services and products out of the data,” he said.