I'd like an example. Not challenging you, I'm genuinely curious
Oh, it's cool. I was just too tired to post again. LOL
The obvious answer is collecting the data to sell it, but that's more complicated than people think. Chinese factories are after that data to develop products for trade shows and associated private labels, and it's not always a monetary exchange. Sometimes it's an exchange of products, development time, or even shaving off development cost by skipping to the brass tacks of the market. After you're done, the factory has the data; along with about thirty other entities.
Beyond that, there's monetizing their electronic properties, which is a big game these days. The web is rather like real estate, in that regard. Any value you bring to your electronic properties sticks. Sometimes, there's a bit of a "pump and dump" effect. I've done it myself, but not like this.
Another possibility is selling their "place in line" within the community by re-branding later; or simply accumulating the data to increase the value of the company itself in the eyes of larger interested parties. If you corner the VW market, you don't have to continue making products. You can simply sell the brand. This is perhaps the nastiest option. In this event, your data is used as an asset in the exchange.
They're not that smart, though.
Right now, I believe they're trying to penetrate the VW enthusiast community in a very nasty way. You promise the world to people, they send you everything they've got, and then the position is filled laterally. If anyone who signs up does indeed get "a job", their labor and time will be abused. They benefit from this by the guaranteed forum post about the position. It was only a matter of time, and I'll wager it hit all the major forums in one form or another.
What's the data for in that event? Well, they now know a shocking amount of details...
Age
Race
Location
Employment history
Name
The middle school you attended
Interests
Level of enthusiasm
Hobbies...
...and so on. Whatever you give them; but this is a resume, mind you... You put a heck of a lot of sensitive information in a resume.
With much less than that, I can sell you your own credit card number. With that amount of data, they've got the inside line on everything here, and certainly who the next demographic is likely to be. That affects product planning.
These guys didn't seem to have much of anything VW-related. Right now they're trying to determine what they should produce, if anything. In that effort, they've mislead people and lied.
Even if someone is cool with all of that, you're trusting whatever hard drive they've stored it on, their cloud services, the service terms related to their operating system, internet provider, their Gmail, Facebook and Twitter accounts, their internal privacy practices, and a pile of contracts by which they are bound that not a soul there ever read the first word of, and that morning they showed up hung over and accidentally e-mailed your shit to their mother.
That data is worth more than their entire business. They now have a catalog of everything that makes a person a VW enthusiast, and with that, they can seek out more and manipulate those that already exist.
It's disgusting, really.