We want to match people driving to some event with people wanting to get there. Yes, such platforms exist — but this is non-commercial, collects as little data as possible and has a matching algorithm intended to be as simple as possible while being specialized for event based ride sharing. The actual contact between the two parties is left to the users after a match has been found and accepted by both parties.
First, you need to register an account; no email or anything except username and password is needed for that.
All passwords are never stored as plaintext, but according to current standards (salted and hashed), they are even upgraded to a stronger version when it becomes available, and you log in next time.
After you're logged in, you can configure your profile (required for actually using most stuff), create locations (as global, for everyone, or only usable by you), sign up for prepared events as a driver or passenger, or even create your own event, at which point further data will be requested.