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LOLrockbottom wrote:I need to do something--my current plates are a genetic disorder.
I'm with you there but obviously theree is a reason people are obscurring their plates on-line. Someone took advantage of the fact a license plate number was on-line and did something with that information such as create a fake duplicate plate with a real number. I never heard the story(ies) of how people have been swindled on this matter. Can anyone enlighten me?famousperson wrote: But I just don't understand wanting a random plate, and blanking the plate out when posting pictures. I sort of get that personality trait of people who do it, but not its functionality.
snippageSander Abernathy wrote:famousperson wrote: But I just don't understand wanting a random plate, and blanking the plate out when posting pictures. I sort of get that personality trait of people who do it, but not its functionality.
I think it's the same group of people who take the motel/hotel door-lock-cards and duplicate you with all the info they contain.Unless they also disguise themself to look like me, have the same make, model and color vehicle and go run a bunch of red-light cameras and EZ-pay toll lanes with my plate number on the back. The probability of someone doing that to me is really low. However, the probability of me doing that to someone else is pretty high. Havingn thought that through, I strongly recommend that everyone with a white R12R continue obscurring their plate. I'm tired of paying the toll on the way to my office and I can't handle temptation when it comes to practical jokes (and most other felonies).
jess wrote:While I did actually post my custom plate here, I did so against my better judgement. I generally habitually blank my plate out of photos.
It's not because of the tinfoil hat, and the principal is poorly understood by armchair pundits who don't really realize what privacy (in the electronic sense) actually is.
The goal is not to make your license plate a secret. Obviously, to function as a legal license plate, it has to be visible when you're out riding on the street. Thousands of people a day see it. This is not the issue. Anyone who says "what's the point" is missing the point, or perhaps willfully ignorant.
The issue with license plates as it relates to privacy is that any two pieces of information that can be connected are significantly more powerful than those pieces are in isolation. If I know someone's name, it's not a big deal -- it's just a name. If I see a BMW R1200R with a particular license plate out on the street, it's also no big deal. Just another license plate in a sea of license plates.
If I know that a person with a particular name has a BMW R1200R with a specific license plate number, I now have exponentially more useful information than I did before. This may not seem like a lot, but those pieces are now connected and may now be used in more powerful ways. Add a home address and a telephone number and I've got the makings of a social engineering hack. When you post things like your license plate in a public form where you also use (or have occasionally mentioned) your real name, you are making connections about your life that someone can use against you. If the picture happens to be in your driveway and shows your house number, well... let's just say that Google Street View is a pretty powerful tool.
The point is that the information in isolation isn't very important. In order to ensure electronic privacy, we must be careful not to make the connections between pieces of data too easily obtained. That's the point.
You are absolutely correct, that two pieces of individual information are exponentially more useful than either of the pieces alone. A dedicated hacker with a computer science degree would be able to make the connection. Anybody with access to driver's license or vehicle registration information (more people, legally and illegally, than I like to think of) wouldn't have to--the connection is already there. I believe the odds of someone coming on this forum to get and use what they could find out about me for some nefarious purpose is so remote as to be vanishingly small. There is so much information about me "out there" that they wouldn't even bother, if they really wanted to know.jess wrote: The issue with license plates as it relates to privacy is that any two pieces of information that can be connected are significantly more powerful than those pieces are in isolation. If I know someone's name, it's not a big deal -- it's just a name. If I see a BMW R1200R with a particular license plate out on the street, it's also no big deal. Just another license plate in a sea of license plates.
If I know that a person with a particular name has a BMW R1200R with a specific license plate number, I now have exponentially more useful information than I did before. This may not seem like a lot, but those pieces are now connected and may now be used in more powerful ways. Add a home address and a telephone number and I've got the makings of a social engineering hack. When you post things like your license plate in a public form where you also use (or have occasionally mentioned) your real name, you are making connections about your life that someone can use against you. If the picture happens to be in your driveway and shows your house number, well... let's just say that Google Street View is a pretty powerful tool.
The point is that the information in isolation isn't very important. In order to ensure electronic privacy, we must be careful not to make the connections between pieces of data too easily obtained. That's the point.
I have to agree with FamousPerson.. and I've probably been on the Interwebz much longer then anyone else on this forum (I was on Arpanet before Al Gore invented the Interwebz.. and on dialup BBS systems before that..) and have never made much of an attempt to hide who I am. Actually - if you look at any posting from me over the past 20 years (and it's been that long) - you'll typically find my full name as a sig, and often what vehicles I own or have owned, and the city I live in. Given there are only about 2,000 families in my town, and I serve on a public board in the town - finding me isn't hard to do. Add in the references to technical papers I wrote or have been used as references in other technical papers, a careful search of the web usually returns about 10,000 or more legitimate references to me.famousperson wrote: You are absolutely correct, that two pieces of individual information are exponentially more useful than either of the pieces alone. A dedicated hacker with a computer science degree would be able to make the connection. Anybody with access to driver's license or vehicle registration information (more people, legally and illegally, than I like to think of) wouldn't have to--the connection is already there. I believe the odds of someone coming on this forum to get and use what they could find out about me for some nefarious purpose is so remote as to be vanishingly small. There is so much information about me "out there" that they wouldn't even bother, if they really wanted to know.
In the computer security field, there's a concept called "attackable surface". The goal is to reduce the attackable surface wherever possible. The fact that you are vulnerable to one kind of attack is a very poor excuse for not defending against other forms of attack, especially as (in the examples we are speaking of here) the attackers are different, have different goals, and approach from different angles.deilenberger wrote:famousperson wrote:Hiding your license plate might make you feel better - but it does nothing to prevent the crook casing your house from knowing when you're home, or riffling through your trash, or even watching to see what boxes (like the big-screen TV box) you put out on the curb on trash day.
jess wrote:In the computer security field, there's a concept called "attackable surface". The goal is to reduce the attackable surface wherever possible. The fact that you are vulnerable to one kind of attack is a very poor excuse for not defending against other forms of attack, especially as (in the examples we are speaking of here) the attackers are different, have different goals, and approach from different angles.deilenberger wrote:famousperson wrote:Hiding your license plate might make you feel better - but it does nothing to prevent the crook casing your house from knowing when you're home, or riffling through your trash, or even watching to see what boxes (like the big-screen TV box) you put out on the curb on trash day.
It's like saying that motorcycles are already dangerous, so why bother wearing a helmet or gear? Poor reasoning to the extreme.
No, it's not at all. It's like saying that I don't wear armored wrist protectors when I ride. Even though that would theoretically add to my safety, I consider it superfluous. I.e., the minimal amount of personal security added by blurring photos of plates is not worth the effort.jess wrote:deilenberger wrote:famousperson wrote: It's like saying that motorcycles are already dangerous, so why bother wearing a helmet or gear? Poor reasoning to the extreme.
(Er, not that it's germain to the discussion, but it wasn't me that said that--the innermost quote, that is).jess wrote:deilenberger wrote:famousperson wrote: It's like saying that motorcycles are already dangerous, so why bother wearing a helmet or gear? Poor reasoning to the extreme.
You're certainly entitled to that opinion. I'm not going to force you to blur your plates, nor is anyone else. I'm simply explaining that electronic privacy is not about concealing a license plate, it's about concealing connections between otherwise isolated pieces of information. You can apply the same principal to a whole host of other pieces of personal information, all of which is an entirely different proposition from making sure the windows in your house are locked.rockbottom wrote:OK. I'm just trying to make the point that it doesn't make sense to take a position that more personal security is always better (a point which I fail to make to the IT people at work). Instead, everyone needs to decide if the security value added is worth the cost. I personally think that the security value added of munging a license plate in an online photo is so minimal that it's not worth the cost (effort).
Good choice! Is the irony (ref this conversation) intentional?rockbottom wrote:And now that my application is on its way to PennDOT, what I've asked for is "HEXED"
