UNOREAD

June 6, 2006 7:02 AM

Why bother blurring license plates?

Both online and on TV, license plates on cars are often blurred to make them unreadable. Why? It's not like the plate number is a semi-secret key to ID theft (such as a Social Security number or Driver's License number).

Yes you can look up information about the owner based on the plate number, but isn't that information getting much more difficult to obtain?

Is this just a case of overkill in the name of privacy protection?

posted by baltimore to society & culture (7 comments total)

That depends on the circumstances. (from a uk perspective)

On the TV most number plates are blurred out to avoid an invasion of privacy claim.

Online (as in sales) I think it's normally done to try and stop car cloning - it's much easier to find a perfect match for your car in sales magazines than it is on the road. Once you have that number you can stick it on your car and it wont instantly raise alarm bells with the police as a fake numberplate.

Personally i think both those worries are daft, but it's the reality of it.
posted by twine42 at 7:14 AM on June 6, 2006

It's not overkill. Some idiot with nothing better to do might contact the owner of the car. The owner of the car has not signed up for that, and the network doesn't want to be liable if anything happens.
posted by bingo at 7:23 AM on June 6, 2006

Again for a UK perspective: The official list of people who should have access to this information (the police, other bits of the government, the insurance industry) is almost as scary as the list of people who should not but would like to. Even if I am willing to believe that these organisations are all trustworthy I am not willing to extend that trust to their many thousands of employees.

It is also worth bearing in mind that information about your car - as tied to its number plate - is not just found on the official database. Any business you have given this information to (garages ,etc) as well as anywhere where your car might have been filmed can also gather this sort of data. They might not know who owns the care but they will know where it was.
posted by rongorongo at 7:38 AM on June 6, 2006

I used to run the website for a muscle car parts supplier. We had a "Customers' Cars" section, where people could send in pictures and descriptions of their vehicles to show off all the work they had done with our parts. Anyway, nearly everyone who sent in their stuff would ask that I blur the license plate before posting the pictures, yet said it was okay to list their full name, address, phone number, and even the VIN! It always blew my mind that they felt some need to obscure the tag...
posted by daveleck at 7:47 AM on June 6, 2006

Previous AskMe
posted by Sibrax at 8:55 AM on June 6, 2006

I asked about this before, also thinking it was overkill. You can very easily pull up someone's name and address details from a license number.
posted by mathowie at 9:02 AM on June 6, 2006

Sorry Matt. I did search first, but obviously not well enough...
posted by baltimore at 10:01 AM on June 6, 2006