Why obscure your license plate in photos here?

[WoodWorks]

Yeah, I figure the risk to me of allowing others to see my car's license plate online is right up there with the International Space Station crashing down through the atmosphere and right onto my house.

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[CanadaGuy]

It's just a numbers game. Exposure while driving, multiplied by x (some number?) from a pic on the web.

Maybe I'm naive, but I'm not worried about it.

The difference is that while driving around the exposure is local people that you’re driving past. Very few of them are scammers. Online the exposure is 8 billion people including the all the countries where most scammers operate (Nigeria, India, China etc).
From MTC they can have your username, location, and depending on what you’ve discussed here before, possibly a lot more. Maybe you use the same username on other sites. Maybe you’ve mentioned your birthday in discussions here (possible password hints). All of that can be used to craft a scam. This is their profession. It’s what they do. Sit at computers all day, gather data and steal identities. They are opportunistic. Throw in your license plate and you’re just giving them one more piece of ammo to work with to steal your identity. Unlike the thousands of people you drive by who only have you Lic plate number.

 

[dalola]

The difference is that while driving around the exposure is local people that you’re driving past. Very few of them are scammers. Online the exposure is 8 billion people including the all the countries where most scammers operate (Nigeria, India, China etc).
From MTC they can have your username, location, and depending on what you’ve discussed here before, possibly a lot more. Maybe you use the same username on other sites. Maybe you’ve mentioned your birthday in discussions here (possible password hints). All of that can be used to craft a scam. This is their profession. It’s what they do. Sit at computers all day, gather data and steal identities. They are opportunistic. Throw in your license plate and you’re just giving them one more piece of ammo to work with to steal your identity. Unlike the thousands of people you drive by who only have you Lic plate number.

lol....you need to spend more time in my neighborhood!

Joking aside, can't really argue with you (except the 8 billion thing....only about 5B have web access).

Still not worried about it.

 

[Edge Haley]

I'll just add this - I've worked in the software and intel community. I don't go out of my way to hide my license tag but don't volunteer it either. BUT if I see your license tag, I can pretty easily find your phone number, home address, your kid's names, and if you have a Visa Card, PayPal account...and the list goes on. Once you get 3 pieces of data someone can fairly easily be tracked down...for good or bad reasons. Data on the internet can be cross referenced...Google searches can be our friend and enemy...If Google can't find something, public record search engines charge $5 ->$10 to find almost anyone.

When you get these robot cell calls dozens of times a day, a computer is most likely dialing random phone numbers and when someone picks up they now have A "real cell #" and that continues on...this information is now sold for big bucks....for more robo calls.

Wife's car was sideswiped recently, someone in the parking lot saw the denting of a door and left a note under wife's windshield wiper with the tag number...took 10 minutes to call my states DMV, explaining it was a hit and run, and got the name and address of the teenager who owned the car...to avoid a hit and run charge his parents fessed up and paid for the door damage. State data belongs to each state...not the Fed's.

If you do a google search for a "battery powered drill", within an hour most of us will start receiving popup ads for "drills". Home Depot, Lowes, Amazon, etc will pay 2, 3+ cents for your phone number, tag numbers, or email address....all starting with 2 or 3 pieces of data left out for exposure. Former Mayor of NY became a "billionaire" selling publicly available data on the internet....I get 2 to 5 calls, texts or emails every day that came from these sources. Our government has done nothing to protect privacy and it is probably too late.

As a side note, ordered my Maverick in another state and purposefully bought my own tag in my home state...but within a week of getting my tag I was receiving sales pop-up ads for 3rd party Maverick accessories sellers. I know it is hard to believe but software is available to scan all the pictures on this site, looking for license plates and automatically insert them into a spyware program to scan for names, addresses in "literally" seconds. Humans not even involved...software grabs what it finds and feeds it to search software. I change my Credit Card numbers about every 30 to 60 days due to scams.

Tinted windshields is a Federally Regulated automotive feature...FACT. But the Fed's can not force state's law enforcement to ticket tinting...even cops have over tinted windshields. I drove thru a weigh-station a few years ago and got a $150 ticket for my tinted side windows (was even a rental car) since Iowa law does enforcement tickets to CDL drivers at weight stations. CDL's (trucker) licenses are federally regulated and reported.

 

[RichardCranium]

I'd rather not have someone on some random forum know if the vehicle they see on the street or in my driveway is linked to this account. Why else?

If that's not something that concerns you, why don't you use your real full name for your user name here?

This is my real name… cruel parents

 

[MakinDoForNow]

In Florida only law enforcement can get information on the owner from a license plate number

Nothing is private. Take a pic of truck with licence plate crop it and do a pic search online for that plate. Do search for other vehicles with same registered address. A few more searches and you will know when the registered address will normally be vacant. Of course you could just drive around with a dash cam.

 

[MakinDoForNow]

This is my real name… cruel parents

Aaarrrggghhh! And to think that until this we thought Richard was just a wannabe thinker? Shoulda dun a searcharoo!

 

[Montana]

Yeah, I figure the risk to me of allowing others to see my car's license plate online is right up there with the International Space Station crashing down through the atmosphere and right onto my house.

https://www.mavericktruckclub.com/f...icense-plate-in-photos-here.43883/post-773801

 

[RichardCranium]

I have to say, it is amazing what you can find on the web. My wife is quite the sleuth, just using google. It is amazing what you can find out with location and names alone. And all that is the free information. It definitely makes it easier to find things when people are posting so much over social media. I had never really thought about the license plate thing, but people are making good points, and going forward, I will be blanking my license plate. Good thing I don’t have a plate yet, so I don’t have any pictures out there already. There is a saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” So blanking the plate is that ounce.
I am aware that photos have metadata, and some websites scrub that info when the pictures are posted. Does anyone know if MTC website scrubs that data? My guess is no.

 

[Dignam]

You can find out a lot about a person by their plate. It takes 45 seconds to block it out in a pic, and to me that's worth it to decrease exposure/risk from the entire internet, down to a handful of locals who see it daily.

 

[Deleted member 30736]

I think that some people obscure their plates because they have a clever vanity plate and want to keep it for themselves. It's like intellectual property. Selfish bastards....

 

[SLJ]

I think that some people obscure their plates because they have a clever vanity plate and want to keep it for themselves. It's like intellectual property. Selfish bastards....

I can't believe two of us have the same plate...

 

[C J Cox]

I‘ve noticed that some here make sure to obscure their license plate when posting photos of their truck, and I was wondering: why?

personal choice

 

[RockHoundTX]

If you do a search on "license plate cloning", you will find hundreds, if not thousands, of posts on the subject. In many (if not a majority) of these cases, the scammer got the license plate number off the Internet (for-sale sites seemed to be the biggest source). As a general rule, cloners are not local. Having two cars with the same license plate within the same geographic area is too risky. If I am driving and see someone in a Maverick with the same license plate as mine, you can be assured that an arrest is imminent. In most cases, the cloner is in another state. The amount of time and money spent by the victims to correct this is extreme (normally toll related but been a few cases where the scammer did something illegal and the police showed up at the victims house).

Just for fun, I typed "Area 51 Ford Maverick" in a search engine and clicked on the Image tab. In less than 5 seconds, I now have roughly 2 dozen license plates that i could potentially clone from at least a half-dozen states. This is a heck of a lot easier and less risky than driving around looking for a Maverick and getting the license plate number locally.

So how prevelant is this? I have not seen any specific numbers but some of the articles implied that the number of cloned license plates may be in the 10s of thousands. Thus, far from insignificant. You likely have a higher probability of your license being cloned from an Internet post than getting robbed (yet, most people actively try to avoid situations where you could be robbed). More importantly, the trend is growing since many states have now restricted paper plates (since 100s of thousands of vehicles were using fake paper plates). It takes me only 30 seconds to blur out a license plate vs the hundreds of hours and many $$$$ to correct on that 1% chance that some scammer 1000 miles away decides to use my license plate number at some point in the next 10 years.

 

[OrCoaster]

Yeah, I figure the risk to me of allowing others to see my car's license plate online is right up there with the International Space Station crashing down through the atmosphere and right onto my house.

Now that is said, make sure your home owners insurance is paid up.

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