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A comment on What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You. Parent comment

Re:What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You by throwaway27448 on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @06:56AM (#47046554)
The plate is pretty trivial to fake though. For one thing you can just remove it, but it's trivial to alter with just spray paint. Or using an outdated plate, or someone else's plate, etc. it's identifying sort of how an phone number is supposed to be identifying: nominal, but not secure and trivially abused for fraud
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Re:What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You by ale42 on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @08:08AM (#47047115)
> The plate is pretty trivial to fake though.

Sure it is, but people can't realistically think to randomize their plate numbers to avoid tracking... IANAL but is it probably a criminal offense to do so.

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Re:What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You by franga2000 on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @07:46AM (#47046913)
It's trivial if you're concealing your conceal your identity when committing a crime, but a huge pain in the ass and a crime itself if you just want to protect yourself from creeps tracking you.
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Re:What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You by Asmod4n on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @07:19AM (#47046714)
In Europe and the US all new vehicles now have a visible ID under their front window glass, it’s called a VIN. It’s even standardized where it must be.
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Re:What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You by caseyohara on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @07:46AM (#47046905)
Are there cameras that can actually read VINs on moving vehicles?
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Re:What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You by ale42 on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @08:13AM (#47047150)
I'm pretty sure it should be possible if one really wants to do it. Think of a high-power IR flash and a high-res camera synchronized with the flash, with fixed focus on where the VIN would be passing. If the flash pulse is short but strong enough, it should be possible to read the VIN. Maybe some polarizing filters to remove glass reflections are needed.
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Re:What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You by Barbing on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @10:35AM (#47048603)
I wonder what the first vehicle to have the VIN under the windshield was. I believe I saw that for the first time maybe 20 years ago (USA).
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Re:What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You by wlesieutre on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @12:15PM (#47049968)
This says 1969

https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

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