ronkelley

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Why do people black out their license plate numbers in photos? Anybody on the street can see them. What is a bad guy going to do if he sees the number?

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xjokerz

I've wondered this too. I have facebook only for the marketplace because craigslist is dead so if i want something, I check fb but if I see a car for sale I usually see the seller's thumb over the plate. I really don't get it. I think one person started this years ago and others followed. It makes no sense.

Margate330

I don't know! lol

I've done it on my personal vehicles but I only did it because everyone else did it.
Figured they might be on to something about a stalker or something but now that I think about it, I don't know.

Totally lame.

I've seen that many times and I figure if someone is so friggin lazy not to black out the plate in a tasteful way, I automatically assume the oil was NEVER changed.

For gosh sakes, use some photoshop, NOBODY want's to see the dirty finger.

Striker223

No idea, I guess it may be to prevent a records lookup as to where you live and where the car is located so they can't come steal it?

ronkelley

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Someone stole my photos of this Jeep I was selling on Ebay, blacked out the I.D.s and tried to sell it again a week later. But it was rather obvious as it's a one-off.

ronkelley

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Stealing it out of your garage must be harder than just seeing in a parking lot, pulling up with a tow truck, and hauling it away in 5 minutes. I don't keep special vehicles parked on the street, even in my quiet neighborhood. If I lived in a neighborhood where things were shady, I just wouldn't drive an LC500. Or park anywhere long in many of the big cities unless I had a secure parking spot overnight.

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Striker223

That's about the only thing I could think of it would be useful for, if you are targeted or have something really worth stealing you will need to defend directly.

mmarshall

If people want to keep their privacy and the privacy of their vehicles, at least while they are on-line in the forum, I don't see anything wrong with that.

tex2670

I think that people are very keenly aware of ID theft. Whether cloning your license plate number can legitimately make you an ID theft victim, I don't know. But blacking out your plate number is just so easy, why chance it if you are at all concerned?

link13

I also only blurred out my plate because other people did it. For thumb, yes it’s lame. Pretty sure you can blur the plate using something as rudimentary as Paint. I see the finger blur and the radar goes up a bit as it seems the seller wants a quick sale, which is not always great.

Kense

You can't randomly look up plates either so I don't know what the purpose is. Try looking up a plate, you'll get a bunch of those fake pay sites pretending to go through a database then at the end of 5 minutes wants you to pay them to release public information that tells you NOTHING. You'd basically have to have a police officer or someone be able to run your plates to get any DMV information.

patgilm

That’s what I heard too. My wife has two cousins that are police officers and I asked about it one time.

Striker223

And think about how many cops there are and what their average income is.....

link13

That’s a pretty loaded hypothetical. Years ago I “met” a CHP officer in the course of receiving a non moving violation ticket. My only chance of beating the ticket was if the officer does not appear in court. Their compensation is public, so I googled the officer and found a PDF with officer pay. This officer was roughly 90k in regular duty and 80k in overtime. The 80k in overtime told me I lost the case and I did not waste anyone’s time contesting it. The 170k in total compensation says the assumption of what they are paid may be incorrect.

Striker223

No it landed perfectly based on your response, like so many other things in life smarter people have better tactics and approaches. You yourself showed that by checking your opponent before wasting more resources