It’s not unusual to be in a situation where you need to look up license plates. A search like that is required in case you need to find someone who might have committed a crime against you or caused an accident. Of course, there could be other reasons like if are interested in buying a vehicle on which you saw a “For Sale” sign, but the only info you have about is the plate number. Not everyone is allowed to look up license plates, it depends on his purpose and what he is after.If you are allowed to perform a license plate search, this procedure can supply you with information regarding the owner of the vehicle such as his full name and address. What you should know is that civilians can’t just run a license plate trace for free or just do it whenever they wish. This is confidential information, stored in a database at Government-owned computers. It’s not a public type information that anyone can access, in order to protect the citizens and secure their privacy. The Police Department and the state DMV are the only authorized institutions that can perform license plate searches.
However, things have changed a bit as the Internet really took off. Now, if you have legitimate reasons, you can lookup license plates online by registering at one of the tens of websites offering this service. These websites require a certain registration fee which depends on the period of time you have access for (typically for one year) and the number of searches you are allowed to make (could be unlimited).
Looking up license plates over the Internet is simple. After you register, you login at the website using the account information received during the registration process and then provide the license plate number, and as a result you obtain the owner’s name, address, phone number, vehicle identification number and whether or not there are any liens on the vehicle.
Besides doing it over the Internet, there is another way to lookup license plates and that is by hiring a personal investigator to do the job for you. This is by far the most expensive way, but it might be your only option left in case the website search didn’t provide the necessary results. Such private investigators are officially authorized to access resources and tools that the public sector does not, and in addition, they have specialized training.
The Police Department and the state DMV are the only institutions authorized to lookup license plates. There are lot of websites offering lookup telephone number type of service. There are several legitimate websites on the Internet that allow you to conduct a license plate search, but there is a fee for registering and it varies from $30 to as much as $200 depending on the options. A criminal search reveals information about the criminal background of a given individual.