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Comment by troyvit | Hacker News Reader

Yeah for some reason I find it so creepy that Kia ties your license plate number to your car's functionality. I don't know why but I feel like those two things should operate exclusively.

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That is incorrect, as per the article Kia ties the VIN number to the car’s functionality. The author used a 3rd party service to convert the license plate number to VIN.

Maybe this? $0.05 per request

https://platetovin.com/about#pricing

But how are they getting the data?

Most states have the data publicly available if you know where to look or how to request.

Uhh this seems like a big fact to gloss over, and something I am quite surprised by. Could you point to any examples as I’m having a hard time finding anything available publicly from any DMVs/states

In Michigan anyone can do a in-person plate lookup for about $15 and it comes back with complete registration information including name and address. VIN and car details as well.

That’s usually the kicker - requests have to be done in person but other than that there’s not much limitation.

The $15 makes this pretty hard to scale too. The link someone posted was $0.05/request. I'd love to see how/where you can get this data in bulk from a primary source.

License plates are incredibly insecure. They are a short, easy to automatically recognize ID that is expensive to change, and it is a crime to drive while they are covered.

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