To such a degree that I have a pair of Vans with my Beetle's license plate number embroidered on the back. Also, it helps that I'm so irritating that I'm almost kidnap-proof, even if someone could find out where I lived from my car's tags. But, I do have a wife and son far less annoying than myself, so I better get to the bottom of this. A simple Google search reveals plenty of sites that offer ways to find out information based on license plate numbers.
Hell, even our Gawk-bro site LifeHacker did an article on this very subject. But that's the internet — I wanted the advice of someone who's job it is to actually know what's what with this stuff, and, ideally, have a uniform. So I called Officer Mosqueda of the California Highway Patrol and asked him, flat out, what information can people get from a license plate, and, as a CHP officer, would you suggest obscuring the plate?
The truth is you can find out a lot from someone's license tags. Officer Mosqueda said that there are both legal and illegal ways to find a person's name, address, the registration and fee history of the car, and more. All this information can be made available to anyone, either through the DMV or through paid services, many of which are online. For example, in California, to go through the DMV, one would fill out an INF 70 form , which allows people to request information on a given license plate number.
The form does list a set of permissible uses, such as driver safety, theft, hiring commercial drivers, etc. This method is still an improvement over how it used to be. Prior to , it was easier to get home addresses from DMV records, and this was the method by which the man who murdered Rebecca Schaeffer , an actress from the 90s television show My Sister Sam , got her home address and related information.
No system is perfect. Here in Canada, you can file a request for info on a license plate with the MTO. It will give you a postal code, but not a complete address. The good news is, they have to give their own personal info in order to get yours. I was able to find a photo of a car with an exposed license plate and run a lookup on a 3rd party site in less than 5 minutes. Admittedly, most of these lookup websites are scams. This info is likely outdated and applies to a previous owner of the vehicle.
However, hiring a licensed investigator for a low fee should return plenty of current, private info. Blurring a license plate in Photoshop is quick and easy. This is a common argument, but there is a difference.
The chances of a potential troublemaker remembering your license plate along with all the details and modifications on your car are pretty slim. In contrast, the internet is permanent. People can go back and reference the photo as many times as they want.
A thief can pay close attention to all of the sellable parts on your car as well as check out what other vehicles might be in your garage. A random series of letters and numbers is hard to remember. It literally takes a few seconds in Photoshop. Most of us lock our houses when we leave. Of course not. All we can do is try to make their job harder and blurring your license plates is one way to do that.
The opposite is true if you blur it. Who knows, going the extra mile might make them choose you for a paid photoshoot! That increases the chances of it falling into the wrong hands in a big way.
Is also not true because people have all the time they need to take pictures of your car and plates everytime you are parked at a shopping mall or elsewhere. Blurring a plate is pointless. The only thing a plate run through the NCIC National Criminal Information Computer reveals about you is your name, address, the kind of car that plate is registered to, and if your registration is current.
Not exactly world ending information, and information that can be found out about you a million and one other, much easier ways. Quit being so paranoid. Stop living in constant fear! Live your life already!!! Thank you for the article. Never thought of this. As note.. It is a description of a psychiatric diagnosis which is very difficult to live with if one is afflicted.
Perhaps you could change the wording. Thanks for pointing that out, Ann. Reasons why you may want to blur your license plates: Why would anyone feel the need to hide their license plates on the internet? I recently took a photo of Lambeau Field for my days of lambeau field photography project , and this particular image had a car directly in the frame, with a very easy to read license plate.
After a bit of research it seemed that the consensus was the safe thing to do is to blur the license plate. Google street view blurs license plates. You can see this image near Lambeau in Green Bay in which the license plate of the SUV in the bottom left hand corner is clearly blurred. As I cruised around Google street view I noticed that they blurred out all license plates.
The writer concludes:. Check out how to blur license plates in photoshop to see how I do it.
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