As always when using search engines, you might have to tweak the search a little, in our case that would mean writing the complete license plate number together ( BXXXXX4), trying out adding blanks ( BXX XXX4) or using quotes (“BXX XXX4”). Next to possible text-based results, we might obtain image-based results, as Google and other search engines often use optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from images. The first step would be to simply google this license plate number. I’ve redacted information, since all case studies that I’ll use in this blog will be coming off real data. The following license plate popped up in our investigations. Now, let’s start off with a little fictional case study. Oh, and since modern cars have all kinds of multimedia systems onboard, MAC-addresses, BSSIDs or Bluetooth-IDs might be another way to track down vehicles. I will mainly concentrate on some of the research possibilities in the United States, so here’s an overview of license plate designs in all 50 states. This will lead back to the person or organization that has registered and/or insured the vehicle, although it will often not be able to research this information for free or through OSINT at all. For those interested in this, I recommend you start with the Wiki-page on VINs to understand more on how it is composed. This code will give you the make and model and sometimes the manufacturing year as well as the overall specifications the vehicle has. This is a 17-digit code assigned to every vehicle. The first being the Vehicle Identification Number, or VIN. Each motor vehicle (cars, motorcycles, trucks) has several unique identifiers. Searching solely based on the manufacturer, model and color might not be the best option if it is a mass-produced vehicle. To start off, we first have to understand which vehicle data we can query online. But here’s an overview of some of my go-to sources. For example, if you are not familiar with anything that will allow you to look up a license plate in your country, just google it ( license plate lookup, find infos on license plate, etc.) and try out different sites yourself. And before I dive into some useful sites, one of the best tips I always have is: use OSINT to conduct OSINT. Keep in mind, that this blog will not include every source out there and that these sources may vary from country to country. This blog will show some of the resources you can use when conducting COSINT: OSINT on Cars (or any other motor vehicle). There are many different approaches to find information on vehicles and sometimes also on their owners. with the National Child Protection Task Force, you will often come across vehicles in the cases you work on. Whether you are an insurance investigator, working in law enforcement or supporting crowd-sourced OSINT investigations, e.g.
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