alt Hacker NewsWith no other identifying info, though, what can they do with a license plate number in isolation?
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You just work backwards.
Here's what I would do working off just a single license plate number w OSINT.
I would pivot immediately into license plate databases that have been breached. For example, ParkMobile got popped in 2021 and the db has 20.9M license plates in it. prob have low success rate and iirc its pretty US centric. It has their full name, address, phone, email, all kinda data.
If you had paid fancy tools, like Lexis Nexis, you could plug it into there and easily find the owner.
There are also plenty of license plate look sites online where it will tell you the VIN and make/model details.
Idk, would just take digging and keep spidering out with all new info you find. Would yield a few hits eventually.
In many states, car registration data is public information. If you have a license plate number, you can easily look up who the car is registered to, where they live, etc. License plate numbers are PII.
Some states, like Michigan, you can request owner information (including address) by a in-person SOS visit and $15 a plate. I've always thought this should be PII and shouldn't be allowed on reddit, for example, where PII is banned. Post a driver with plate in Michigan and you may have doxxed them.
Most people park at their home and many drive to work. If you have both of those data points, you can identify people.
Exactly - you can collect license plates numbers way easier than this. The best data they can really get is a connection to an IP address.
Checksum?
Sell it to the cops and/or ICE as belonging to "self-identified persons of interest."
> With no other identifying info, though, what can they do with a license plate number in isolation?
For typical users not taking extra precautions, visiting a page in a browser is providing additional identifying info, a fact that monetization of the free-as-in-beer web relies heavily upon, but which can be leveraged in other ways, e.g., by a site that draws you in with privacy fears as a technique to get you to submit additional information that can be correlated with it.