brody.cepeaux
Active Member
I want to make everyone aware of a scam that is going on right now. As some of you may know I work in the vehicle industry as a business manager (finance guy) and I attended a seminar recently that was related to identify theft and what is going on in the marketplace right now.
Many of us post photos of our vehicles online and cover up the licence plate thinking it is protecting you. I dont see the point in this at all. As we drive around the roads everyone's licence plate is visible. In order to obtain the information from the registration bureau one would need some police type clearance to access that information so this act is somewhat irrelevant. But what is on display in plain view inside every single vehicle on the road? What could be used to completely assume someones identity and falsify credit documents? The answer in simple, your VIN number.
All vehicles have this number displayed in plain view. With a simple lien search on CarFax, would cost the person $6.50, if that vehicle has a loan on it, every simple piece of information is displayed right there in plain view. Here is what will show up on that report.
1. Full legal name
2. Date of birth
3. Residence and date of residency
4. Bank in which your loan is tied to
I only need the information from number 1-3 to get someone approved for a vehicle loan. The rest can easily be falsified and the banking system for vehicle loans is unable to do anything about it. The big ones are name and DOB.
Unfortunately even in my small Canadian community I personally have been involved in intercepting 4 seperate attempts to falsify a purchase of a vehicle. One of which was cross boarder and ended up involving false ID's, false bank information, false bank draft and included the FBI. Super scary.
I protect myself from this simply by taking a business card, turning it over to the blank side and using this to cover up the VIN of my truck. If and when I am pulled over by law enforcement, i simple remove the card so they can do their process to verifiy that I am the owner of this vehicle.
The reason for this post is that this is actively happening in Canada right now. False auto purchasing is skyrocketing and the number of victims is staggering. I would really hope that you consider doing this simple thing to protect yourself. We all know the VIN is on display in multiple places in a vehicle but if you think like a thief, you will take the path of least resistance. This means if your is covered, hopefully they pass over to the next person. Again all they need if the info and they can go and take out a loan in your name. Please act now and protect yourself by covering up your VIN.
Many of us post photos of our vehicles online and cover up the licence plate thinking it is protecting you. I dont see the point in this at all. As we drive around the roads everyone's licence plate is visible. In order to obtain the information from the registration bureau one would need some police type clearance to access that information so this act is somewhat irrelevant. But what is on display in plain view inside every single vehicle on the road? What could be used to completely assume someones identity and falsify credit documents? The answer in simple, your VIN number.
All vehicles have this number displayed in plain view. With a simple lien search on CarFax, would cost the person $6.50, if that vehicle has a loan on it, every simple piece of information is displayed right there in plain view. Here is what will show up on that report.
1. Full legal name
2. Date of birth
3. Residence and date of residency
4. Bank in which your loan is tied to
I only need the information from number 1-3 to get someone approved for a vehicle loan. The rest can easily be falsified and the banking system for vehicle loans is unable to do anything about it. The big ones are name and DOB.
Unfortunately even in my small Canadian community I personally have been involved in intercepting 4 seperate attempts to falsify a purchase of a vehicle. One of which was cross boarder and ended up involving false ID's, false bank information, false bank draft and included the FBI. Super scary.
I protect myself from this simply by taking a business card, turning it over to the blank side and using this to cover up the VIN of my truck. If and when I am pulled over by law enforcement, i simple remove the card so they can do their process to verifiy that I am the owner of this vehicle.
The reason for this post is that this is actively happening in Canada right now. False auto purchasing is skyrocketing and the number of victims is staggering. I would really hope that you consider doing this simple thing to protect yourself. We all know the VIN is on display in multiple places in a vehicle but if you think like a thief, you will take the path of least resistance. This means if your is covered, hopefully they pass over to the next person. Again all they need if the info and they can go and take out a loan in your name. Please act now and protect yourself by covering up your VIN.
