
DMVs in the U.S. are selling drivers’ information to private investigators - jonas21
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kxzq/dmvs-selling-data-private-investigators-making-millions-of-dollars
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Thorentis
Not surprised the data is being used for investigations, surprised it's being
sold to _private_ investigators. There's a big difference between bribing the
person behind the service desk counter to do a license plate lookup, and
actually just selling the data for profit.

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m-ee
Fastrak data is also for sale. I thought I remembered reading that someone
used it to stalk their ex but I'm having trouble digging that up.

[https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-12/toll-
road-...](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-12/toll-road-
agencies-privacy)

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aussieguy1234
The data includes "a nine-digit ZIP code, date of birth, phone number, and
email address". That's just asking for identity fraud.

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paulie_a
Those details are all public record. They are not exactly useful without more
information

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Fnoord
> Those details are all public record.

I don't know about the US, but in the EU this is PII, and therefore falls
under GDPR.

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paulie_a
Except this is an article regarding the USA so the gdpr is irrelevant.

Edit: downvote all you want but the us doesn't follow gdpr. The DMV doesn't
serve Europe. Much of the world doesn't have to care about the gdpr. The
information sold is all easily accessible from public records and a tiny bit
of web scraping. Going back to the original point. It's not that easy to steal
identities without actual private information

~~~
Fnoord
How other countries (in this case an ally) deal with an issue is relevant as
it allows you to reflect and learn from it.

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paulie_a
It's not relevant to the discussion. It's about DMVs in the US.

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Fnoord
I don't believe we will reach consensus about the relevance of that. Hence I
refrain from continuing this discussion with you.

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Operyl
I’m a bit surprised that this came as a surprise to a lot of people. In some
states, like Florida, they don’t even need to pay very much for this data and
it’s very open via the Voter database.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
In Florida you can even get the exact DL# by following the formula and using
the DMV website to verify the appended last digit. The last digit is just +1
based on how many people have the same name & year of birth as you.

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woah
Beware- I’m not entirely sure but changing a URL might be considered criminal
“hacking”.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
[https://services.flhsmv.gov/DLCheck/](https://services.flhsmv.gov/DLCheck/)

no 'hacking' required :o

Even better...
[https://services.flhsmv.gov/VirtualOffice/Welcome.aspx](https://services.flhsmv.gov/VirtualOffice/Welcome.aspx)

Just need last name + DoB

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staticautomatic
FYI this is governed by a federal law called the Driver's Privacy Protection
Act

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2721](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2721)

I have worked with the vendors who procure and sell these data. Happy to
answer any questions.

~~~
tzm
The public should know the economics of how their privacy is sold online. What
is the price of something like this? Are there any restrictions on use? Do you
have an example data license agreement, etc? Do you have example of column
definition / schema to understand the scope of data?

~~~
staticautomatic
As I mentioned in reply to another comment, the restrictions on use are listed
in section (b)Permissible Uses of the DPPA.

The price varies considerably depending upon what kind of data you're after
(and setting aside volume discounts). Things like driver's license searches,
vehicle searches, auto accidents, and moving violation history cost $0.50 to
$2.00 if you're buying a la carte, but you're usually getting these data as
part of a report costing $5.00 to $10.00. You can pull detailed driving
records from about 18 different states at cost of anywhere between $7 and $25,
depending on which state it is (these reports are a la carte only).

I don't have a license agreement I'm allowed to send you, but I can tell you
that many government agencies around the country have contracts with these
brokers, so if you know the name of the product/company selling the data then
you can find some of the contracts online.

Except for those expensive reports, you never really know where the data
you're looking at came from. I suppose I could run identical searches on
people with the DPPA data flag turned on or off to compare but haven't had
occasion to. You basically just get back whatever fields you request-- they
might be populated with DPPA data and they might not. You never know and the
broker's don't annotate the response with anything indicating the data's
provenance.

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rhacker
I wouldn't be surprised if DMV employees walk into PI offices and do side
deals (circumvent the official channel for a discount, and, for the money to
flow to the employee directly).

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paulie_a
If you ask nicely with a sob story you can get it for free.

(I was trying to track down my father's 69 mustang not stalk someone)

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leemailll
hasn't this been for years? I mean you pay online for this when searching of
plate numbers.

