Theory behind blocking out Number Plates in Pics..

[Timbo]

I was reading a members rides thread and someone asked "why do people bother blocking out the number plates in pictures?"

There's 3 good reasons that I can think of;

1. Theft/Vandalism. Believe it or not, there are low-lives on all kinds of forums from pedophiles, stalkers, thieves etc. It's something we don't think about but no doubt that they are out there.

If I was a thief, I could scout out your car with a bit of effort.

*People usually have their location under their user name. Great, you're in my area.
*Those pictures of your car look familiar. I reckon I've seen it around. Beauty.
*The poser pics you did at work/local IGA/recognisable car park, I know the area. Think I might just hang around there in case I see you, then follow you.
*And to top it off, I can marry up the plates from the pics on the forum to the car in real life, just to be doubly sure.

2. Police visit forums for illegal activity. Now I have no experience with this on 4WD forums, only performance car forums, but I can't see why they wouldn't frequent all car forums that matter. Police are cracking down on 4WD'ers a lot now for all kinds of different reasons. That massive turbo you just put on your 4WD, or that V8 you've just plonked in, is that legal? You won't want any unwanted attention really. Sure, your car can be identified by other means, but a lot of cars look the same and 4WD's have a lot of the same mods. License plates are the determining factor.

3. Selling of your vehicle may be affected by your plates. You've posted up all of these pics on forums of your 4WD doing some hardcore tracks, door handle deep in bog-holes, laying over on it's side etc.. Then you're trying to sell it and some people are cluey to what you've done. It can make things difficult for yourself.


I realise these points seem pretty far out and hopefully, the likely-hood of anything like this happening to you is 1,000,000,000 to 1. Just bear them in mind next time you post your pictures up with your plates showing and ask yourself, what if?

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This was added by YNOT and deserves to be here;

2 more reasons to block number plates.

1; Insurance companies can look at forums like this and may find what they consider reasonable evidence to reject a claim, even if what they find is actually unrelated to the claim. ie, some insurance companies only cover you on gazetted roads, if they find evidence of you in a 4WD park they may consider that grounds to reject your claim.

2; Warranty. I know from my time with Ford that members of the FPV owners club had driveline warranty claims rejected after Ford had a look on their club website and found photos of the cars on track days. Same could happen with Nissan.

Really good points.