In this thread
some posters post pictures of licenses to go with what they have seen. To me that makes me uncomfortable as if violating someones privacy. At the same time, whoever chose the plate did so to display it. Still, it feels like releasing someone else’s personal information without their consent. I do not know that there should be a rule against it, but maybe some guidelines should be in place?
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So something makes you uncomfortable for no logical reason, and you want other folks to change their behavior to accommodate this feeling.
Have I got that right?
License plates aren’t private. They’re specifically public and connected to a known person. I don’t understand why this bothers you. People aren’t required to own or drive a car, having a public license plate is a choice.
Whether a picture or just typing the license plate number is pretty much the same anyway.
This is not a situation that the Moderators need to worry about I believe. There are probably a few scenarios that would be an issue, but just posting humorous personalized license plates, no, not really. We use judgement as needed, no need for more rules.
I don’t think plate info is publicly available, only the law can access that info? I Could be wrong there are many instances on camera when plates are blurred out.
I get that it sorta kinda feels wrong, but there’s nothing in these pictures that’s remotely private. So far as I can tell, the most we (the people in the thread) are doing is telling the world that this car was in a specific location at a specific time, and maybe who was occupying it. But those pictures tend not to include the driver, just by nature of taking the pictures sitting behind them in traffic.
Also something to remember, not that this would/should change someone’s mind, but if you have personalized plates, you’re generally getting them because you want people to see them.
I was going to ask what personal information is being released, but TriPolar’s comment reminds me that not all states are the same. In Wisconsin, with a license plate, all the information I can find is the year, make and color of the car and when the plate expires. That’s it. No names, no addresses, nothing that I couldn’t tell from looking at the car itself.
Other states may reveal more information, but again, it’s already out there.
I would argue that just typing the license number is not the same as posting a picture. Unless of course you also provide the state it was issued in. It could be used to identify someone and perhaps where they live. It is possible that I am overly sensitive to this given how much loss of privacy we continue to experience in general.
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Availability about the registered owner is often restricted to specific causes. I don’t know about all the states but that’s mostly done by limits on state agencies to release that information. It’s certainly available when there is cause to release it.
At least in my state, Wisconsin, it doesn’t. The most it reveals is where that plate happened to be when I took the picture. Short of it being in their driveway at the time, I wouldn’t know how to connect a random plate to an address via publicly available information.
I agree and I try to keep my cards close to my vest, but I don’t think it’s an issue in this situation. For example, I’m not going to post my plates here because that connects it with my online persona, but if a random person posted a picture of my car on reddit, I’m not sure what harm that would be.
I think it could be argued that typing the plate is worse than a picture, at least WRT to the argument that someone could get doxxed since a search engine is going to be a lot more likely to find text than it is to find a picture of text. That is, if I type my license plate into google, I’m not going to find that picture of my car on reddit, but if the person on reddit typed it instead of posting a picture, google is more likely to find it.
We had a big long debate about that here years ago in a thread about what you should do if someone falsely claims you hit their car. The amount of info a random person can get with just a plate, ISTR, is different from state to state, but you’re not likely to get a name from a plate by passively searching the internet.
The OP’s complaint is a foible in search of a problem.
Today I saw a car with ABC 123 on it.
OK, what have I divulged? About who? Adding make model and color of car, and even the state changes nothing.
How is a picture logically different from the same info in text? It isn’t.
California made it private after the Rebecca Schaeffer murder in 1989. I imagine every other jurisdiction has as well.
I don’t get the OP’s concern. If a car is on public view, what is the difference between looking at it and posting a photo online. I mean even if the photo is used to dox someone, what is the difference between
And
“Hey, anyone know who has the Arizona plate GT5HNDO on an orange Shelby Cobra?”
From the land before time 9/2025, approaching Atlanta
And it’s paid for 
Moderating
Please do not post pictures to this thread unless they are relevant to the discussion of the board’s rules and moderation. Please use the thread linked in the OP instead.
Never mind
I work for a state agency, some of my coworkers have access to look up license plate info, and it’s heavily controlled.
But that’s info connecting a license plate to an individual. The plate itself isn’t private; on the contrary, it has to be publicly visible by law so that law enforcement can see the plate as you’re driving.
So I can’t imagine what “privacy” is being violated by posting pictures of license plates that are visible to anyone. Unless you include something personally identifiable; a photo of the driver, their name, etc.
I occasionally get people telling me I should redact vehicle registration plates when they appear in my videos because something something privacy. They’re not private - they are on public display.
There are scenarios we could imagine where a photo of a car might breach some reasonable notion of privacy, but in all cases I can think of, it’s the presence of other information in the picture that would be the problem, like if it’s a picture of the car, parked in the driveway of an identifiable address, with a recognisable person standing by it.
Doesn’t Google street view do this (not videos, but same idea)? I suspect you are being the victim here of a sort of reverse “reasoning” by those folks, who assume that, because Google does it, there must be a good reason for it, and therefore everyone should do it.
That certainly could be a factor in it
I concur.
The wording of the plate- well, that could be any of many states. But the actual picture? That is an invasion of privacy for a non public person. It tells you the state and the tag year etc.
It is like posting a picture of a non-public person and calling them out. Sure, in public in a crowd, thats one thing, but this is like posting a picture one some person and giving their na,e and state.
It is but only if you happen to be in that state at that moment in time. here it is available worldwide for a long time.
Right- it could be any of some maybe 50 states (some states have different rules).
Not much.
State, and tag.
I fail to understand what problem a picture of your lisc.plate could cause you. (Any person)