Number plate blanking

[Danny]

Hello

I'm sure this has probably come up before but i'm fairly new to RR so please excuse me.


I'm a Regional Organiser for another forum and one of the things we do is get anyone posting a photo of there car to blank all number plates from the site, this is mainly done to try and stop the wrong people using it to find your address and steal your pride and joy, believe me there is a number of ways to obtain an address using just the number plate!


As i said above i'm new to this site and not trying to change the rules but just wanted to state a fact.

Thanks

Danny 

[guz]

well we don't all have the technical abilties to do so

[kabman]

Is there evidence that this is actually a significant problem? Thousands of people see a number plate every day while it's on the road. In fact thousands of people see my car parked outside my house - there's no need to go to the bother of looking up the address.

[vanpeebles]

I always blank mine when putting it online. You never know who is looking at it. Also prevents plate cloning too.

[LowStandards]

Sept 29, 2015 8:07:51 GMT vanpeebles said:

I always blank mine when putting it online. You never know who is looking at it. Also prevents plate cloning too.

Does it really work though? I mean literally it took me 3 mins to be able to say T5*8 *AD Is the plate on your old Mira Turbo




I think people get a little para over these sorts of things, as mentioned your plate and thousands of others are seen every day...

[vanpeebles]

Well found That must have been an old pic when I did the swirly thing I usually do the full paint over these days

Just to add, you do hear of stories though where people have received speeding tickets and car park fines and not been anywhere near that time or place. It's far easier to find a match on the internet rather than just observing one at random locally. A cheapskate tealeaf could find a plate online, check it for mot and tax, and then have some cheap motoring fun.

[EmDee]

Chemtrails.

[welshpug]

/\ yeah, that.

utterly pointless, do you take your plates off when you drive the car about?

guessed not, stop being so paranoid.

[Danny]

Like i said I'm not trying to change things and no i don't take my plates off on the road but if someone is looking for a certain type of car then there is more chance of finding one online than on the road wouldn't you agree?
It's easy enough to do just edit the photo in MS Paint before posting and yes it can take a bit of time but at least no one will be able to find your car by its reg only someone else’s!

Maybe I am being paranoid but I've also had a classic car stolen in the past so personally i think it’s a good idea.

[sb]

Most criminals are opportunistic, if they see it and think they have a chance they'll take it. Not an awful lot of planning.

The ones that do plan are out looking for your car not googling for your license plate.

If you want your car to be secure you need more than MS Paint on the plate.

[Danny]

I agree but every little helps i suppose.

[penski]

I'm not sure what the point of the op is... Are you just telling us that other forums exist? I'm sure there are forums where wild unicorns frolick in digital meadows.

Have a car:



*n

[lordyoung1980]

It's hard enough for me to post pics here without having to hide reg plates. It's all paranoia.

[Iain]

Probably worth posting a how-to, explaining why someone might want to remove their plate, and let people remove it at their own discretion.

I've often blanked out my plate, although wasn't that fussed when it appeared in a magazine wearing it's plate.

[stevek]

Wecome to the forum Danny. I can see your sharing a genuine concern and think a few of the reply posts may come across as somewhat rude or flippant in there response. I don't think that's very fair to someone who is just advising caution in a friendly manner.

That said I do tend to agree with the notion that blanking out plates is unlikely to achieve much. I personally have never gone to the trouble despite being aware of the slight risk. After all most dodgy folk using clone plates will probably have a fairly bland car to nick forecourt petrol or runabout with no tax/mot. So if my car was a silver W-reg 206 then maybe it would be a greater (still small) risk but I probably wouldn't be posting pictures of that anyway. On the otherhand a silver W-reg 924 is probably not the obvious target for those activities hopefully....

I once had the number plate snapped of my boring old mk6 escort probably to try stealing petrol but luckily the plate snapped so couldn't be used but that was just on the street so I couldn't have prevented it. Also you can't control your car being in the background or being photographed by someone else and being posted online, after all it is a publicly displayed plate. I think for most people/cars some sensible security precaution is advisable but you cant get paranoid about every possibility.

As an exception though. if its a 3-door Mk1 Escort or something I would definitely advice more caution (maybe including plate blanking) as they are the ones that get targeted by professionals rather than the regular undesirables, but owners of these already know about that!

-Steve-

[Battles]

Sept 28, 2015 22:01:31 GMT Danny said:

believe me there is a number of ways to obtain an address using just the number plate!

I believe that there are but we're in the realms of bent coppers and the Computer Misuse Act if you want to exploit such systems so it seems unlikely to me that criminals with this level of technical sophistication would bother nicking cars.
Once a criminal gang established that they had access to that sort of data (individual personal details of vehicle ownership and address details) they would got for richer pickings, getting moody credit cards and the like rather than TWOCing cars and selling them on for pennies on the pound or stripping them for parts.

Criminals generally follow the Occam's Razor principle and go for the simplest and quickest method of getting the most cash they can for the least effort, which is why breaking into houses to steal keys is such a big thing. It requires no specialist equipment and yields decent money and it's over in a few minutes.

[VIP]

Sept 29, 2015 12:56:23 GMT Danny said:

Maybe I am being paranoid but I've also had a classic car stolen in the past so personally i think it’s a good idea.

The theft of your car had nothing to do with your number plate being visible.

[DarrenW]

Just about all the photos I put up have the number plates tagged in the EXIF data and the title where possible, I'm kind of OCD about labelling things like that. In 12 years of posting them online I've never had anyone ask for their plate to be blanked/removed, but I've had many dozens of emails from people thanking me - "Hey that's my old car, I was googling the number plate and it's nice to see it still about" or "I've just bought this car, thanks for the photo of how it looked five years ago!" etc. For me personally the pros outweigh the cons.

[MrSpeedy]

It wouldn't be difficult to find my car if they wanted, with or without plates!

[rmad]

Cars are out there right now, on the streets, with unblanked number plates for anyone with eyes to see. I think that blanking plates can be seen as a polite or respectful thing to do, but I'm not sure it's really necessary.

I suspect that the real risk of online plate visibility would be cloning, for instance - I could look online for a car that matches my own, check it has tax/MOT and insurance online and make up some false plates that'd make my car ANPR, speed camera and parking fine proof - but I'd still need to get the plates made up and change them regularly just in case the owner let anything lapse or received a fine and notified the police. I would imagine that such a plan would be more likely to work on a bland modern car than a rare/noticable classic. If you wanted cloning candidates for a modern than any car sales site (Ebay, Autotrader, Gumtree etc) would be a much better source than a forum.