Because the common car thief has replaced his Slim Jim with a laptop. These guys are smart cookies. Sure, you could say that this is why we have car insurance. But some cars have sentimental value.
We live in a world where card readers in stores and at gas pumps are the norm. We also have cases of mail fraud and incidents where criminals sort through the documents in your trash. Identity theft is a big problem. Think again. Remember that noob that you pwned and humiliated online?
Well, he found some other sites that you used the same username on. That cool sunset pic that you have in your signature on the local BMW forum revealed your license plate.
Now he knows where you live. Hope you locked your doors! This makes for easy prosecution. All they have to do is show up at your house. You did all of the hard work for them. You would be surprised at how far an insurance company will go to be able to deny coverage to someone.
A few years ago, there was a case here locally where insurance companies sent employees undercover to race tracks in order to write down the license plates of every car they saw racing. And thanks to your exposed license plate, they know exactly who you are.
Not everyone wants to share their identity online. A license plate is an identifier and tells people who you really are. Did you register with your first and last name, or an anonymous username? In the location section, did you list your full address? If not, you probably did that for a reason. It might not even make any difference at all. But if you share enough of your life online, any savvy criminal can spend a few hours and build a profile on you. Where you live. Where you work.
What you drive. Other expensive belongings you might own. Social media, forum posts, and your license plate make their job even easier. As car guys, we love to share details of our vehicles with other car guys.
Blurring our license plates in photos allows us to use these without making ourselves vulnerable. Who can access it? So you should be pretty safe, right?
I wish that were the case. This murder led to the creation of the Drivers' Privacy Protection Act of Private, paid services don't even care if you're a creepy murderer or not— they just take your money and send you the information.
Now, this information isn't your blood type and a list of your deepest, most secretest fears, but the possibility to get your address can be worrying. As for the argument that your plate is already visible to anyone walking by your car, that's certainly true. It's just that the internet can so vastly expand the number of people able to see your license plate that it may become an issue.
Still, as Officer Mosqueda told me with a certain degree of poetry, "You can't blur out real life. Officer Mosqueda's final advice? You may as well obscure your license plate, just to be safe. His attitude was that while it's not likely the information would be found and misused, it could happen. So, I'm proposing a couple of little rules that I plan to live by, and will suggest that these be made Jalopnik policy:. Oh, and if the license plate in question is a really funny or ironic personalized plate, or an inadvertently dirty one, I reserve the right to ignore all these good rules.
Because a penis joke on a license plate or something trumps all laws. How's that sound? Oh, and remember: "You can't blur out real life. The standard is as follows from left to right across the plate:. With cameras in cities and all over the roads, these plates are easy to read.
A plus is that this makes it much more efficient to catch traffic violators, even across so many countries and with a huge database of information. No two plates across the EU have the same information on the license. Each one is unique! Your plates are always going to reveal your identity to the people and departments that manage vehicles, safety, and traffic regulations. That's their purpose, they're on record, and even if the information is blurred online, it won't help. But if you have a unique personal plate, it will make it more difficult for someone to identify you and your whereabouts by your plates if not blurred digitally or if simply seen on the street.
They won't be able to see your country of origin if it's on there or the age of your vehicle the year registered on the plate.
This lets you pretend your vehicle is more "vintage" and cool than it is or allude to it being newer than it is. Besides the beauty of having a bit more privacy with your plate, some enjoy the literal beauty of a word, phrase, or idea on a vanity plate or the fact that it's like a piece of art if it's a vintage collectible like those with just one number and one letter!
And the price is a beaut too! Which brings us to another reason people love vanity plates: Their value tends to rise so they're a great investment. But remember, you can get reasonably priced privacy plates too so this is totally doable! The plates in the UK that you saw with one letter and one number are called "two-digit plates" even though one of the names digits is a letter. There are also three-digit plates. You surely noticed the high price.
This price usually goes up with time as it just makes your plate older and more valuable. So no matter what your reason for buying an older plate, especially these really old and original one, you'll be getting an investment that's likely to grow in value. Some people literally get privacy plates for the investment. These plates are unique and can feature beautiful, hip, funny, and other types of words, if not already taken. Still wondering why do people blur license plates?
Wonder no more. The answer is privacy, as you've learned.
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