I would not recommend covering VIN and paper plates and parking illegally. Sounds like a good recipe for getting the car towed.

 

I'm curious, what kind of fraud, etc. could someone commit with the VIN? Are you concerned about someone somehow putting a lien against your car?

 

I rather pay parking fines then covering your VIN and getting the car towed.. it could go over $225 and the hassle through the impound... i personally think its not worth it...
If your worried about parking your car in "un-safe" places, i would get a long distance car alarm and get the remote which tells you if someone touches your car...

 

There is good reason to obfuscate your VIN number. I was watching a documentary posted to YouTube where someone had drugs put in their car without even noticing it. This is a new trick the cartels do. They jot down your VIN number, then they go do any locksmith, and get a key made for your car, then they can put the contraband in your car, without your knowing it.

If you travel anywhere in or near Mexico, hiding your VIN number might well keep you out of jail. After seeing that documentary, I will outright destroy the windshield VIN, on any car I own, before ever travelling to Mexico again. That was a sobering documentary. I will outright destroy the windshield Nin, before driving in Mexico, to make it impossible for someone to get my VIN and get a key made without my.permssion. A piece if electrical tape placed over the windshield VIN should do it.

From now on, after seeing that, whenever I go to Mexico, I will obfuscate the VIN on my windshield so that the cartels cannot get a key made from my VIN, and make me an unknowing drug mule.

 

^ when we say "this was in mexico" around here, we weren't really in mexico.

 

Holy Zombie threads, Batman.Almost 8 years and this one is brought back to life!!!
To say this is far-fetched is a gross understatement.Let’s think about this for a minute...
To make this work, I need to drive my car from Canada down to Mexico.Some drug smuggler needs to make note of my VIN, then take that to someone at his local Mercedes Dealership, pay them off to order him a key for a car he doesn’t own, because a VIN is useless to a ‘normal’ locksmith.
Then the smuggler is going to wait a few days, because the local dealership just orders the key, they don’t actually make it themselves.Then several days later, once the key arrives, he needs to find my car again (and hope I haven’t already left town in the week it’s taken for the key to arrive), then he’s going to open my car with the key, and plant some drugs.
Wow!That seems like a lot of work.But wait, he’s not done yet…
He needs to know somehow that I’m travelling back to Calgary sometime soon, because what good is it if my car’s staying in Mexico for several months while I’m wintering there – he wants his drugs moved. So, he needs to know when I cross back into Canada, and then bribe someone at the Alberta registry office to find out where I live - because how is he going to find the car again in Calgary? Then he sends my key to his Mexican cartel buddy that happens to live in Calgary - to my house to break into my car and claim the drugs.
Doesn’t this seem like a hell of a lot of work? Why order a key when anyone with a slim jim can get into a car in a matter of seconds?Or better yet, since I’m part of a drug cartel, why not just make use of any local that I can use as a drug mule to smuggle stuff across the border for me.
I suspect we’ll see this debunked on Snopes some time soon.

 

I must have missed this 7+ years ago. But, when Steve Jobs was alive, this is just what he did. He drove a White MB SL. He traded it every six month's and replaced it with an updated twin so that he was driving on paper plates all the time. He also, AFAIK, parked in handicapped spaces. He was one of the greatest visionaries of our time, but also a strange duck

Lou

 

weird that other states dont have inspection stickers.

 

Welcome to the forum, Chilly8.

Great to see new members who know how to use the Search function.

 

it is a good idea to hide your car vin number. But how?
any key from start/stop button cars are a simple transmitter device, probably Bluetooth, sending radio codes to your car.
if you lost your key transmitter any Lexus dealer can order a new one just by using your vin number. If dealer can do it, then any good
hacker can use a program to open and drive away your car just by using your car vin number. It is already happening with Tesla

 

It is all about the keys. In southern CA in the late 90's, a ring of thieves was getting duplicate keys (with "unique" resistance coded to the ECU) from unscrupulous folks employed by Honda dealers. These days the fobs are marginally more secure due to initialization procedures. I have covered VIN's on three cars over twenty years and it is a bit disconcerting not to have enough gap to do this on the ISF.

 

Unfortunately its easy to get the vin nowadays. You can run carfax based off your tag number and vin comes up there.
I used to cover my vins on my hondas back in the day.

 

No stickers here in CT. A cop can get reg & insp info from the plate.

 

Remove the vin and tell the officer that it's an 80%, ghost ISF, that you built in your garage.

 

I laughed at this too hard because i get it...