How to Protect Your Car From Identity Theft
No matter how secretive your identification information is, there’s probably a gaping hole in your security efforts: your car. Like you, your car is associated with multiple numbers. Unlike you, it drives around with those numbers — your license plate and VIN — in plain sight. Your car’s identity is even more vulnerable than your own, and that vulnerability can have a huge negative impact on you. Here’s what you need to know about car ID theft and how to protect your car.
Numbers and VIN codes
Your car’s public identity is tied to two things: its license plate and its vehicle identification number (VIN). License plates are posted by law, making them easy to copy or steal , while your car’s VIN is often displayed on the dashboard or in other easily accessible places on the car (as well as on title, registration, and insurance documents).
Using your license plates and VIN, criminals can cause you real harm by performing a few simple fraudulent actions:
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VIN Spoofing: Thieves can use your car’s VIN when they have a stolen or damaged vehicle to sell. Spoofing your VIN with the real thing can erase flood or accident damage or hide the fact that the car is stolen. After selling it privately for cash (usually on a platform like Facebook Marketplace), the thieves disappear and the new owner is left in a bind. For example, an Ohio couple lost $33,000 when they unknowingly purchased a car with a spoofed VIN through Facebook Marketplace.
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Hacking. VINs are useful for modern cars because they can help hackers figure out everything they need to access the car’s software (you can see some of the information encoded in it here ). Manufacturers use VINs to generate access codes, and VINs encode information about where and when the car was built, which hackers can use to figure out what version of software they’re dealing with, as well as known exploits and vulnerabilities.
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Stolen Vehicles: Stolen license plates can be installed on stolen vehicles to prevent the plates from being picked up by law enforcement at red light cameras, speed cameras, or toll booths.
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Avoiding tolls and fines. Stolen number plates can also be used to avoid automatic tolls or fines. The thief can brazenly accumulate violations that will be assessed against your vehicle, leaving you with an (expensive) bag.
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Identity Theft: While your license plate number may not allow thieves to steal your personal information directly, it can be used as part of an information gathering scheme to steal your identity. The make and model of your car, your home address, accident history, and other pieces of information can be accessed and used as clues to learn more about you.
Protect your numbers
Unfortunately, there’s not much you can physically do to protect your car’s identity. You can’t legally hide your license plates, and while you can probably hide the VIN if it’s stamped on your dashboard (by covering it with tape, a piece of paper, or a file folder), when the car is parked in a public place, you can usually find out the vehicle’s VIN if you have the license plate, so this is only a partial deterrent.
What you can do is take basic precautions and pay attention to:
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Check your VIN. You can check your VIN history on the National Insurance Crime Bureau website to see if it has been involved in fraud. You should do this regularly to make sure no one is using your car’s VIN for dubious purposes. The sooner you find out, the less damage it will cause.
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Park inside. Avoiding the street can make it difficult for people to copy your VIN or steal your license plates. If you have the option of leaving your car in a locked garage, that may be your best option.
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Avoid trade-ins. There are many instances where you will need to provide the VIN (such as when selling a car). You can ask if the full VIN is really needed, or you can just provide the last few digits, like your Social Security number, thus avoiding the full VIN on as many records as possible. You can also offer to provide a vehicle history report from a reputable company that does not include the VIN.
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Secure your plates. Use tamper-resistant screws or a license plate cover to make it harder for thieves to steal your plates from your car.