Comment by Tangurena2
2 days ago
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.
> there are several platforms
One such platform used to be called Vigilant Systems. They'd sell details of where a car has passed a police/Flock ALPR camera, mostly to repo companies, but also bail/bounty hunters. Using details of license plate scans are more up-to-date than the DMV registration. People on the run from courts are extremely unlikely to keep their vehicle registration or driving licenses up to date.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKxkokoQdkc&t=238
The governing law is Driver's Privacy Protection Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...