The Illinois Secretary of State's office had a 'keyboarding error' on one of my titles, spelling my last name in a way to make it unpronounceable.
So... what would you think when you start getting mail with that same "unique" misspelling?
Is USAA selling my information, including my car VINs and personal email address?
- Thread starter GON
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So... what would you think when you start getting mail with that same "unique" misspelling?
Ya I don't know why they would retain the plate information for 'no-hits' because it's of no use to them. There's nothing they can do with it because it's just a plate rather than make/model.
Maybe for later use in case that plate does eventually end up on the list, gives them a place to start looking for it. And maybe information about what plates are located where is worth something and they can sell it?
I promise you the plates go in a data base there are private cameras everywhere, off ramps, subdivisions parking lots, just start looking for them. It's not just law enforcement and repo companies using them.
Our state dmv sells your personal data unless you check all the right boxes
That certainly appears to be some correlation.
I hope you don’t take my question as accusatory, was genuinely curious if you had a source other than anecdotal experience/thoughts.
That certainly appears to be some correlation.
I hope you don’t take my question as accusatory, was genuinely curious if you had a source other than anecdotal experience/thoughts.
No harm, no foul.... no offense taken. I've been around here long enough (16+ years, LOL) to know that someone would very likely follow up on a statement like that.
My understanding is that in Las Vegas, companies provide the licence plate readers to the police free of charge. These readers identify stolen cars, registered owners with outstanding warrants, expired tags, etc. in near real time to the patrol officer. In return the companies get to keep all the data from the scanners to do as they please.
The good part of this for me is that my daughter's Acura that was stolen twice was located both times within a couple of days and she got it back unmolested. The bad is that if you are driving a car that the registered co-owner didn't show for jury duty you will be pulled over on a pretext and grilled.
They probably have them installed on quite a few police cars then?
Do you have a link?
Where I live they have them in almost every patrol vehicle. It flags the patrol officer almost immediately whenever it picks-up a vehicle from either direction tied to a wanted individual, a stolen vehicle (or plates), expired registration (or insurance), amber alert, etc. This is one of the biggest reasons for why all the savvy street-smart criminals use forged temporary paper tags.
Automated License Plate Readers
Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are high-speed, computer-controlled camera systems that are typically mounted on street poles, streetlights, highway overpasses, mobile trailers, or attached to police squad cars. ALPRs automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view...
www.eff.org
Not sure how to post a link, but if you Google "Las Vegas Metro ALPR" an August KNPR ch 3 article shows up. Looks like my info on free company funded readers is dated. Apparently the program was so successful it has greatly expanded. They have the readers on a large number of fixed cameras and, I believe, in most patrol vehicles. Looks like the data is no longer shared with private data bases, but I'm not sure of that.
"private vendors like Vigilant Solutions capture plate data with mobile ALPRs and then sell that data to police agencies and others"Automated License Plate Readers
Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are high-speed, computer-controlled camera systems that are typically mounted on street poles, streetlights, highway overpasses, mobile trailers, or attached to police squad cars. ALPRs automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view...www.eff.org
They're not common here. I think I've seen maybe one police car with ALPRs on it in the last year or so. I think most of the ALPRs around here are operated by towing companies.
No, the police department can send just the information they want to send out. I'll bet those data companies offer more money for more data though and a police department can just say "eh, not our problem" and make more money.
Sure, and when it gets out that the local PD is selling data for money, it'll look real good on the news...
(We call that an idea that "fails the headline test".)
I don't think they care. Ohio BMV says they don't sell our data but no entities know my license plate numbers, but that data is out there. Where did it come from ? Look at mrsilver's example above about the spelling mistake/typo on his vehicle registration that started showing up elsewhere. His state says they don't sell the data either.
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