Ford Eyes Use of Customers' Personal Data To Boost Profits

According to industry-watchers, Ford is looking to profit off the data it can collect from its 100 million customers. In addition to the data collected from its infotainment systems and mobile apps, 'Ford's CEO recently suggested that the data collected by the company's financial services arm also represents a valuable, low-overhead asset,' reports Threatpost. From the report: 'We have 100 million people in vehicles today that are sitting in Ford blue-oval vehicles,' said Ford CEO Jim Hackett during a Freakonomics Radio podcast. 'The issue in the vehicle, see, is: We already know and have data on our customers. By the way, we protect this securely; they trust us. We know what people make. How do we know that? It's because they borrow money from us. And when you ask somebody what they make, we know where they work, you know. We know if they're married. We know how long they've lived in their house because these are all on the credit applications. We've never ever been challenged on how we use that. And that's the leverage we got here with the data.'

The comments, which were amplified by several auto-industry sources and the Detroit Free Press, sparked alarm in the Twitterverse. Against the backdrop of privacy disasters at Facebook and other stalwarts of the internet economy, the fear for many is that Ford sees selling access to consumers based on their lifestyle as a way forward. Is Ford considering selling consumer data as a revenue stream? Hackett stopped short of saying that -- and indeed, the data could instead simply be useful to the company internally, as a way to increase the value (and profit) of its other businesses.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.