I now know I am OFFICIALLY on some sort of watchlist! Yippee!
The list is supposedly not exhaustive, but I recommend everyone to search your plate to see if you’ve been tracked. I worry for the safety of the women who have been searched more than 50 times by the same user.
To who, and for what? At least conspiracy theories used to make sense
If you think the government is the only organization using your data against you friend, you’re living in a different era. Insurance companies, banks, ad farms, private security, AI tech giants, etc., etc., ad nauseum are all using your public and private profile to shape every second of every day. Testing your limits, tracking your movements, mapping your relationships, your buying patterns, and making you dance like a puppet for their entertainment.
The government is the least scary of the groups shaping your world, because at least there’s hypothetically an accountability mechanism in the democratic process. Public, private, it really makes little difference, if you trust any of them without question, you’re playing yourself
What’s the business case here for this example?
The obvious example is how Facebook tracks your physical location and nearby devices to determine what ads to serve you. That’s often why people think Facebook is listening to them and serving them ads for things they mentioned in casual conversation but haven’t searched for themselves. They didn’t search for it, but their friend did, and they know if you get an ad for that thing you’re more likely to click through based on potential word-of-mouth effects. They’re using your IRL social network and physical location as an extension of their ad algorithm.
I’m skeptical, but to play devil’s advocate: I guess it could help a data broker that had some information attached to a license plate number, perhaps including your identity. When you enter your license plate number into this web search, they can associate the IP address and browser fingerprint of the request with the license plate and therefore with your identity and any other data in the first database. This enables them to connect your identity and your vehicle to whatever online activity data they have for that IP address and/or browser fingerprint.
To sell you something or control you.
How would a company knowing your license plate number help with that. I don’t want them to have it (or anything else), but I legitimately cannot think of a use case
To sell to other companies so they can compare your data on various sources.
…what could your license plate number even be used for
Tell me your license plate number and the state/province and I’ll tell you a lot about you.
OK, SMU-248 MN. You’ll be able to find out its make and model, that’s it, unless you work for law enforcement or an insurance agency. If you’re able to find out my name from it, tell it to me, but it’s literally impossible/illegal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver's_Privacy_Protection_Act
But remember they’d also have your IP address, which could be linked to a lot of other data. It’s not that IP address + license plate is useful in itself, but that a connection is now made that could be valuable to a data broker who already has other information connected to one or both sides. And even if you fake your IP address, there’s browser fingerprinting.
I should have specified I need a photo of it to be sure you’re not making it up 🥰
No, because then you could use the metadata in the picture to find out where I took it, I’m not stupid. Tell me the name or the address of who has that plate.