I mean, the obvious answer is to not give any doxxing info to trolls and scammers, etc… but you’re literally driving around with it uncovered the rest of the time, with any wierdo that actually potentially lives near you (much more dangerous than online trolls, imo) being able to get the info you’re covering. It’s parked uncovered in your parking lot or at your home, depending on your garage situation. Just seems like a dumb step to me, idk.
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Online trolls are weirder and probably more likely to dox you imo, and you might be more likely to give someone a “reason” to want to dox you with online comments and posts than in-person ones
It’s also illegal to cover up your license plate in person so that’s not an option
There is a difference between exposing a license plate to the people who live near you and exposing it to the entire internet. This is potentially millions of people vs a handful of people. Online harassment can be terrible, even if they never physically approach you and people are more likely to do it because there is little risk to the harasser.
you drive around it uncovered because you legally have to. if one is concerned with doxxing and privacy, its best to take a zero trust approach to posting any of your info, posting no info at all if you could would be ideal to that
I also walk around with my stupid face on show to everyone in public, that doesn’t mean I’m going to upload it onto any old social media platform
There’s a big difference between 400 people seeing me in a grocery store and 100k online weirdos tracking me to every stupid tweet or Reddit comment I ever made
My car was cloned from the for sale ad before I bought it. Now yes, I am driving around with the number plate perfectly visible but that gave someone in Wales (I am in Nottingham) with the same colour car as me the opportunity to clone my plates and rack up numerous driving and parking offences which I then had to deal with.
How many license plates of strangers would you recognize if you saw them twice?
For a human, it’s basically zero percent unless the plate is remarkably memorable. For a computer, or a human intentionally using a computer to help them, it’s very high. So the privacy implications of having your license plate on display to humans is minimal unless someone is intentionally memorizing it or looking for you in particular, but the privacy implications of having it on the internet are substantial. For instance, if someone much later – even five or ten years later – has a reason to look for you, they can potentially find every photograph of your license plate ever posted to the internet retroactively. That’s not something you can do by asking humans “hey, did you happen to see this license plate number any time since the Obama administration?”
Having your license plate number cuts down the time it takes to find you from half a second to a quarter of a second.
Driving around in public does not link it to social media account.
because they are going to do something stupid/hinky, and don’t want to get caught
Because you are legally required to display it in one case, and not legally required to do so in another.
Because I’d rather people not know my plate, if they know that they can likely use reverse image search and find where I live from pictures on my local area facebook
If you live in a house in the US, then the odds are very high that several other houses on your street have a front-door key that also fits your front door.
When Randall Monroe exposed a major flaw in how passwords are commonly handled, so many people took away completely the wrong lesson that “CorrectHorseBatteryStaple” became the most used password for a while.
Most people are incapable of grasping even the most basic of security concepts, so they just kinda muddle through, doing whatever vaguely seems like it might help, very little of which actually does, and some of which even makes things worse.
you might be shocked to learn that google had to prove that it can blur licence plates and faces in google street view before it was allowed to operate in some european countries
When people are driving, there are many things to look at. They may spend 1 second looking at your license plate, but for most people that is not enough time to memorize the number.
just a quick question: how would ypu feel about 10 cops standing at every intersection, taking down license plates, and which ones goes where?
Lots of great answers but also when you’re on the roads everyone else is focused on driving too, they’re not trying to take down plates to troll and if they are- they are the same ones on the internet who would too so it’s better to not give it to them in an easy accessible place that could last forever
Reddit tends to operate on an extreme level of privacy. Yes, in theory Google Maps Street View broadcasts many addresses to the Internet. In practice, most people aren’t going to be browsing a random Topeka, Kansas neighborhood.
But if someone rushes to r/pics and posts a street view of a house with the address visible, that’s potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of people it is directly broadcasted to.
Can you send your plate number and face and name? You just put those on display in public all the time so you should be fine doing it here.
If your answer is “No thank you”, then you already understand. It’s an easy step to reduce some level of risk
Its funny when people list on Facebook marketplace and cover the plate meanwhile they posted it from their personal profile with their full name and a whole bunch of public info.
It’s just a smart security move. Especially for influencers who attract irrational (or rational) haters and would be victim of harassment.
Because i’d rather not tell my full name, address, phone number etc to random people on the internet.
In multiple european countries, including my home country finland, you can pay few euros and know all of the previously mentioned stuff just by seeing the license plate. I for one do not want that information attached to my reddit account for everyone on reddit to see.
The people in my home town already know i live there, it’s not a surprise that a license plate whose owners address is in that city drives there, but reddit doesn’t know where i live, and that is not something people on the internet need to or should know. Nor do they need to know how i look like, since my name is unique enough to be easily googled and then my face is known, which i also prefer to not share ok the internet.
This is just called basic online privacy. Just because an influencer shows where they live, doesn’t mean you should.
I don’t know why swat teams are wearing full protective gear. They could be shot from the side into the gap between the safety vests front and back at any point… Just seems dumb to me to wear it at all, idk.
Even a license plate can be used to track someone, assuming they are very dedicated.
License plate can help doxx people.
The internet can be a scary, cruel place. The rest of the world passing by doesn’t know you or anything about you, but when you attach your license plate to social media, suddenly your license plate is associated with everything about you. When you post your plate number in the same place where you post all of your other information, it is now advertised as yours and anyone who wants to find you can do so. Additionally, someone from real life could search your plate number and find everything about you. For example, you accidentally cut someone off while driving and they get really mad. They now have your plate number which is connected to your social media. Your social media can often be used to find out who your family is, where you live, where you attend school, your job, and other things you don’t want an angry stranger looking for revenge knowing.