Comment by kube-system
3 days ago
You don't have to precisely identify it, you only need to narrow it down to a high likelihood of being your vehicle. Then you can verify the VIN in person.
It wouldn't be hard to narrow things down:
Year/make/model/trim/color/region/timeliness will narrow down to a very small if not already unique subset of vehicles. And on top of that vehicles may often have unique stickers, accessories, or scratches which can further strengthen the case. Flock e.g. uses this data in their vehicle identification algo.
I have no photos of my vehicles to initiate a search this way. Am I an outlier and it’s normal for people to keep vehicle pictures handy?
If you had photos of your vehicle, presumably you'd know where you took it.
The idea here is that you find a picture of your vehicle that the thief took, and use this to find the location of where the thief has your vehicle.
That seems like a pretty rare situation compared to any number of alternative use cases. Most of which are decidedly less wholesome.
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Why would a thief post a photo of a stolen vehicle? Are they trying to sell it whole? I can't imagine that is very common, since the buyer won't be able to register it, right? Aren't most stolen vehicles disassembled (chop shops, etc)?
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