The topics of privacy and how companies share our personal data has been at the forefront lately – especially in the automotive world, following the release of a report revolving around some questionable practices that Ford’s cross-town rival, General Motors, engaged in over the past few years. Ford only shares user data after owners give it explicit permission to do so, and it also doesn’t share data with the third-party companies listed in that report, either. Regardless, Ford also recently ranked among the worst companies when it comes to its data sharing practices, and has faced some legal challenges over that same matter – prompting CEO Jim Farley to admit that this topic remains a source of tension with consumers. However, according to a new study from All About Cookies, Ford owners should be able to grasp the automaker’s privacy policies, regardless.
In this recent study, All About Cookies analyzed the privacy policies of 15 automotive brands with the intentions of figuring out which have the most and least accessible data collection disclosures. This is notable because the main concern over GM’s disclosures is that they’re buried in legal speak, which consumers typically tend to skip over rather than reading every single detail. To determine this, All About Cookies ran each disclosure through the Hemingway Editor App, which evaluated them for readability and length.
The results of this study, as one might imagine, were rather interesting. It found that Jeep had the most difficult to understand privacy policies of any automotive brand, requiring a postgraduate level degree to understand, in fact. Kia had the longest at 14,000 words – roughly double the industry average – while the average automotive privacy policy requires a 12th-grade education to understand.
In that regard, Ford owners have an easier time than most, as its privacy policy landed in the 10th-grade education level range with a word count in between 7,500 and 10,000. It wasn’t the best in that regard, but it’s at least somewhat comforting to know that if one wants to read all about The Blue Oval’s data collection practices, most shouldn’t have a hard time doing so – or understanding it.
We’ll have more on the topic of data privacy in the automotive industry soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for non-stop Ford news coverage.
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