wareaglescott

black out their license plate in online pictures? Never really understood that. Do they also drive around with it covered up all the time? What is the difference in someone seeing and reading your license pate in real life vs seeing a picture of the same thing online?
Legit question. What am I missing here?

koala

The only distinction is to retain some form of anonymity. No different than using a nickname in an online forum.

Freddie Two Bs

Completely different. The license plate is already a nickname of sort, your name doesn't show up anywhere. Only law enforcement is allowed to recover your name from the license plates.

mattyf

BLAM

No data is secure. With your LP# some people can get the address of where the car lives and plan to take it off your hands.

BSO

Unfortunately, in the US there's no privacy, if you go on the internet or any popular site, your online data ends up being bought and sold as a commodity. Even if it's obtained "voluntarily" (when you agree to all that fine print that's in everything you buy/use) it can be hacked, apparently quite easily if you have the skills.

The issue with a license plate is that it's a unique identifier, such as social security numbers. How many times are you asked for your SSN by your bank, investment companies and others?

Sure, law enforcement is supposed to ensure that only official inquiries are made into the DMV databases, I'm here to tell you that it's not sacrosanct, "unofficial" inquiries happen.

Also, your tag is a trace that leads back to you, why add that to the growing amount of data in the wild?

Be proactive and protect yourself. If you don't care or believe of its importance, suit yourself.

Cyberbug

Psorcery

What if someone hired a P.I to stalk you for whatever reason? What if the police/feds want to build a case against you? It's all info that can be used against you.

People understandably want to remain as anonymous as possible.. Even though it's almost impossible in the U.S.

bosco42

got you to click so guess it's effective

Ed911.2

I think that is one of the main reasons, certainly in the UK. It’s just another piece of information that could be used to link an address to a valuable asset; as we know, even “secure” government databases leak on the odd occasion.

Whether or not it actually has any effect is debatable but it feels like cheap insurance...

alex_c

Given that I do quite a bit of very high-tech digital security in my line of business, without wanting to sound rude, the real reason is mostly ignorance.

An average hacker (not even a very good one) will be able to find out who you are, where you live, etc without the need of your license plate.

IP tracking, image analysis, EXIF metadata from your pictures, county tax databases, are just some of the widely available tools that can be used to track you down and know who you are.

So, mostly blurring the license is good so your fellow RL's can't recognize you driving around town. I don't care, that's why I don't remove my plates from my pics.

One day when my daughter was little, she asked me: "daddy, why do we have a lock in the front door of the house?" I said: to stop HONEST people from walking into to the house. She laughed and said "don't you mean BAD people?" I said no, bad people can't be stopped with this little lock!

kuma1416

I think one of the implicit reasons is so that some unscrupulous a-hole trolling rennlist doesn't decide to anonymously call up the cops and say I saw a 911 with license plate "xxxxx" hit and run or do something else illegal. If the LP matches the car, in theory that gives their lie some credence. Driving around, it's harder to record someone's plate and in a crowd you're less likely to get chosen. Very unlikely to happen, yes, but nowadays you can't be too careful. Plus there are a lot of jealous people out there who would have no problem seeing a porsche owner get some grief.

Guards_Red_991

My license plate is unique to a Guards Red Porsche 911... If a criminal uses my number to steal a bank then he is the stupidest criminal that ever existed. Same with using the plate to locate my address and steal a Guards Red Porsche. Just stupid... I show my plate just like when I drive my car.

I've gotten my CC number stolen and never display it like my plate. Covering your plate is plain useless.

YVR74

BSO

The main issue here is privacy, it hardly exists. Any small thing I can do to keep away from public view is a win for me.