Personalized License Plates.....

It was awhile ago, but if I remember correctly it took somewhere between 2 and 3 months from the day I ordered them to the day I got the letter saying they were ready to be picked up.

 

Tacoma doesn't have personalized plates but the LeSabre does.

 

I looked up "taco" on Urban Dictionary. The first result is well, the definition of Taco -- the Mexican food, and the second result says apparently Taco is slang for the female reproductive organ.

I bet you it's someone's job at the CA DMV to just look up things on Urban Dictionary.

 

A classic:

 

yes, yes i do

 

FI$H Core Sound!

 

Any cool ideas for personalized tags?

 

This tag is available in Virginia.

Not for me tho........

 

Which raises another question. To obscure or not to obscure...

If you're reading this now, there's great chance that you spend far too many of your waking hours looking at pictures of cars online. Which means you've probably noticed that many of those images have their license tags obscured in some way. Being the inquisitive (likely) mammal that you are, you've probably wondered why the license plate is obscured, and if it's actually a good idea.


At least, I fit that description. Here at Jalopnik, we haven't had a policy to obscure license plate images— I left them intact in, say, my Classic reviews— but it's worth investigating this further.
Read more
The general thinking behind pixellating or blurring or covering the license plates is based on the idea that with your license plate number, more information can be revealed about the car's owner, without his or her consent. The argument against obscuring the tags is that the tags are already on open, public view. Why should it matter if they're in a picture, when they're normally not hidden, anyway?


In the interest of full disclosure, I'll reveal my thoughts coming into this. I was firmly in the who-cares-they're-already-on-display camp. To such a degree that I have a pair of Vans with my Beetle's license plate number embroidered on the back. Also, it helps that I'm so irritating that I'm almost kidnap-proof, even if someone could find out where I lived from my car's tags. But, I do have a wife and son far less annoying than myself, so I better get to the bottom of this.


A simple Google search reveals plenty of sites that offer ways to find out information based on license plate numbers. Hell, even our Gawk-bro site LifeHacker did an article on this very subject.
Learn the Identity of a Car Owner with Their License Plate Number and a Simple Google Search
Whether you're trying to track down a bad driver or someone who keeps leaving their car…

Read on lifehacker.com
But that's the internet— I wanted the advice of someone who's job it is to actually know what's what with this stuff, and, ideally, have a uniform. So I called Officer Mosqueda of the California Highway Patrol and asked him, flat out, what information can people get from a license plate, and, as a CHP officer, would you suggest obscuring the plate?


The truth is you can find out a lot from someone's license tags. Officer Mosqueda said that there are both legal and illegal ways to find a person's name, address, the registration and fee history of the car, and more. All this information can be made available to anyone, either through the DMV or through paid services, many of which are online.

For example, in California, to go through the DMV, one would fill out an INF 70 form, which allows people to request information on a given license plate number. The form does list a set of permissible uses, such as driver safety, theft, hiring commercial drivers, etc. but if someone's the sort of perv that wants a person's license information so they can masturbate outside their bedroom window, I don't think they'd have much issue lying on the form.

This method is still an improvement over how it used to be. Prior to 1994, it was easier to get home addresses from DMV records, and this was the method by which the man who murdered Rebecca Schaeffer, an actress from the 90s television show My Sister Sam, got her home address and related information. This murder led to the creation of the Drivers' Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

Private, paid services don't even care if you're a creepy murderer or not— they just take your money and send you the information. Now, this information isn't your blood type and a list of your deepest, most secretest fears, but the possibility to get your address can be worrying.

As for the argument that your plate is already visible to anyone walking by your car, that's certainly true. It's just that the internet can so vastly expand the number of people able to see your license plate that it may become an issue. Still, as Officer Mosqueda told me with a certain degree of poetry, "You can't blur out real life." Sage words, Officer.

Officer Mosqueda's final advice? You may as well obscure your license plate, just to be safe. His attitude was that while it's not likely the information would be found and misused, it could happen.

Oh, and if the license plate in question is a really funny or ironic personalized plate, or an inadvertently dirty one, I reserve the right to ignore all these good rules. Because a penis joke on a license plate or something trumps all laws.

How's that sound? Oh, and remember: "You can't blur out real life”

 

BIG PNS

 

I seen a really nice lifted square body Chevy the other day. His plate was
MPG LOL.
I though that one was pretty good.

 

TACOTRK

But you aren't getting that one in UT

 

The only problem I see is that I gives potential thieves the ability to easily get you home address. Instead of buying a lot of great aftermarket equipment, they just steal yours, strip it, and put all of your expensive parts on their truck. Then they just set what's left on fire.

- JAMES

 

“SECURE”

Meaning don’t f@&k w my truck

 

OMG PEOPLE CAN FIND INFO ON ME VIA MY LICENSE PLATE???

 

I’m sure they can find my info with this plate.

 

I'm still trying to figure out how to compress "Hung Like A Parakeet" down to 7 characters.