Just Out of Curiosity - Removing License Plate Numbers in Pictures

Why take a chance..... there are some real wingnuts out there!
Of course using my callsign, which can be easily looked up, can also be considered unsafe.
It all depends on how much of your info you want made public!

 

Never made since to me either - Your license plate is "public" anyway.

 

Google does it. That makes it the law right??

 

1. Identity theft, is why. Criminals are willing to use any sort of information about you to make them look legit.

Also remember that for every 1 person who posts pictures on the internet, there are 99 other people who are just quietly viewing that content. The internet is a creepy place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%_rule_(Internet_culture)

2. Because anyone who works for the DMV or law enforcement can pull up a person's name/address using someone's plate numbers. And in Texas, even residents can do this (it's public information there)! Now I trust my local officers and even the DMV to a certain extent, but all it takes is 1 bad egg to make you. Say someone like a member of this forum or even a casual onlooker, is an officer of the law or works at the DMV. He/she could easily find out who you are just like that. Or say someone here has a friend or cousin who works at the DMV, they can ask them to do it and have that information just as easy. HELL NO! I won't have it. You can't trust anyone on the internet these days, whether they're members of the forum or not.

So now the better question is, why wouldn't you block your LP#s in your pictures?

 

It's may be seen by the public, but the information is not public. Once you post it on a board you now have a person's location, and maybe even their name.

 

Your license plate identifies who you are. If you are okay with that, there's probably no big reason not to show your plate. Lots of folks with personalized plates post pictures of them. And some folks use their real names as their screen names. I suppose that over the years I've said enough about myself that a determined person could identify me. But I avoid giving direct identifying information, such as my full name, my license plate, or my ham radio call sign, because I do express controversial opinions, and there are some wackos out there, and I'd just as soon not make it too easy for them to identify me.

I'm not worried that somebody is going to find me and do me physical violence for the opinions I've posted. But I'm also not going to make it too easy for that sort of person to find me. Face to face I can judge whether a person is too unstable to express opinions to. On a public forum you never know who's reading.

When I post pictures of my cars, I choose pictures taken from an angle where the plate is not visible.

 

So many people here post there full name. One guy here even though his full name is his screen name then signs every post at the end with his whole name. Identity theft is awful. Try not to post your name on the Internet.

 

Maybe I'm just not that paranoid. My license plate is always out there for the world to see. I don't remove it from photos. My phone number is in the book and I often post using my own name.

Personal Website

 

It depends.....

I obfuscated my vehicle's plate on this site, and I also do so in other sites. In the military, they call it PII, or Personally Identifiable Information, and it's just a good habit to get into.

I'm not a crop circle fancier, nor am I a George Noory fan, and the few hats that I wear are usually not made from Reynold's aluminum foil however (comma!!) it's an easy thing to do, and in some cases it can save you from a little bit of grief.
There are some really, REALLY sick kids out there, and If I were selling a car, or plastering its photo on the internet, I'd at least think about blanking out the numbers on the plate.
It takes like....30 seconds.

YMMV!

 

Most everyone worries about the creeps, but I worry about the corporations (legit and otherwise). Automatic search and correlate engines are all about determining personnel preferences and sending an avalanche of marketing or manipulation your way for your wallet. Then after that, they sell the info to the next bidders. A hundred small pieces of info can be harvested into a major con job.

P.S. Every single Toyota dealer in the area is wanting to provide "Prius Service". Now how did they all find out I have a Prius?

 

i am also very concerned about publishing my license plate publicly as well...OH!! that reminds me, i need to change my avatar!

 

Now that I know what your cat looks like, I own you.

MUWAHAHAH!

 

could be lots of ways. Toyota purchase records, title transfers, DMV records which are public

CARFAX, posting your info in an online forum...

 

I blanked it out on some of early posts, then I realized anybody in my neighborhood, or the local shopping parking lot, could get my license plate AND know what neighborhood I'm in. Online people don't know my neighborhood and would have less motivation to find out where I live.

If they really have access to the Illinois DMV registry and want to bother running my plate, then what? I don't tell people here when I'm leaving on vacation, junk mail is junked. I don't have online enemies that are going to bother to drive to my house to harass me. Now if I had a stalker or just left the mob family or something, yes, I would be more careful, but then I'd have to be just as concerned about people trying to equate my user name with an IP address that can be traced to a neighborhood. One reason my user name is not exactly my real name, but there are some long-standing members here who apparently haven't had issues with that.

That said, I have seen some people who have personalized their plates so it carries their name or even their street address, and that doesn't seem like a real good idea to me.

I think they buy it from the DMV.
Toyota registers the purchase when you buy the car, and it must be updated by the DMV when you sell the car. When I had a Subaru, I would get their quarterly glossy newsletter sent to my home, and then when I sold the car I stopped getting it. I never told Subaru to stop delivery, I didn't go any online Subaru chat rooms, etc. It was not by any explicit action on my part.

 

If you are female you are at a higher risk of getting on-line stalkers.
Sometimes it doesn't take more than a bit of sarcasm in a post to make people chose you for a personal vendetta, and in this case it is always best to keep the personal information you have on-line at a minimum.

If I know your license plate, I typically know your type and color of car, and the state as well. Now all I have to do say that I have made a scratch in your car and would like to pay for it (rather than my insurance) and I'm sure someone will be helpful in identifying you for me ;-)

And when it comes to DMV, you just have to make enemies with a single person who knows an employee at the local DMV.

 

I don't worry about people who see me driving in my car finding out who I am. I'd rather not have people who lurk on chat boards know who I am.

My cat died of bone cancer at the age of fifteen, a bit over two decades ago. I have no pictures of him. The picture in my avatar is a cat names Aja that belonged to a friend and pen-pal in Spain. Aja looks enough like my cat did that I decided to use his picture as my avatar. I was the very first person on Prius Chat ever to use a picture of a cat as an avatar. There was a "best avatar" contest, and I got an honorable mention.

When I was in prison I put cat pictures on the wall of my cell. I might have been the only inmate in the prison to do so.

Off topic: In prison you learn to make do with materials available. We used toothpaste as "prisoner's glue" to stick pictures to the walls, since they wouldn't let us have tape. The guards hated it because when they moved prisoners around (which they loved to do, for no reason) they had to clean the now-dried-out toothpaste off the walls.

 

My best triangulation is an internal Toyota database. I'm not thinking Toyota Corporate, I'm thinking the Southeast Toyota Dealership Cartel. Each dealer is an independent business (in concept). But the Cartel can force them to do many things such as report all customer sales information. Then in turn, they make this info available to the dealers. The cartel comes out ahead no matter what since they get a cut of all cars and associated business regardless of the dealer.

 

I doubt anyone would try to steal my identity. They would just read my posts on PriusChat and say F' that! LOL

 

What about cats that lurk in your ceiling?