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Comment by lrvick

2 days ago

If you are in California the DMV makes tens of millions of dollars a year selling all the data you give to the DMV, which is why I give them a P.O. Box.

CADMV claims on their web site that they cannot accept a P.O. box as a residence address. I have yet to find anything in California state law supporting this policy, though IANAL. Their enforcement seems to be quite lax.

  • It is a REAL ID requirement. It is federal law. States issuing REAL ID compliant identity documents must mail them to your physical address. USPS provides that data for address validation.

    DPVCMRA = delivery point is a commercial mail receiving agent. Any sort of location with PO Boxes.

    https://developers.usps.com/addressesv3#tag/Resources/operat...

    Disclaimer: I used to work for my state's DMV.

    • As someone who spent years homeless off and on, I resent REAL ID discriminating against the unhoused, so I choose to use the privilege I now have these days to reject it. I do not have or need REAL ID and my passport does not need a current residential address.

  • You cannot literally use "P.O. box" but if you use the virtual street address service the USPS offers now it works just fine.

Am I missing something? What do you mean the DMV makes tens of millions of dollars a year selling data to itself?

  • I used to work for my state's DMV. They'd sell vehicle registration data to various companies, which is how and why you get those "we've been trying to reach you about your car warranty" phone calls. I don't know about CA, but KY had a problem with tracking who ordered and who paid for that data. When I worked there, we found a number of "purchasers" who only paid for Year 1 but stopped paying afterwards.

    Federal law requires state DMVs to supply that data to the car manufacturers. So if you own a Chevy, they have to send your data to Chevy in case there is a recall.

    • I suppose one other industry interested in this information is the bounty hunter industry (bail enforcement). I believe there are several platforms for licensed bounty hunters where they can receive this and similar information about a person/vehicle.

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  • selling (data you give to the DMV) [to third parties], not selling (data you give) [to the DMV]

    • My awkward wording on things like this if nothing else I hope helps inspire confidence that I am in fact a human typing each of these characters by hand.

  • You fill out a form. The government sells the data on the form to someone who pays them money for it. There is no nuance here.