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It's not the license plate that's PII, it's whether I've paid my warranty or not.
by StavrosK 6y ago
It's not the license plate that's PII, it's whether I've paid my warranty or not.
- bluesign 6y agoLicense plate is I guess PII. Something public doesn't stop it to be PII, like IP addresses.
- StavrosK 6y agoI don't think the plate itself is PII, like "158.32.44.25" isn't PII. Tying that to a person is what's PII.
- bluesign 6y agoIt should be PII, otherwise I can put cameras all over the city, log license plates, and sell service for you to query. I think PII according to GDPR is something you can go back to identify a person.
- StavrosK 6y agoI'm not sure, but I think the times and locations are PII. Maybe the plate is too, though, good question.
- koolba 6y ago> It should be PII, otherwise I can put cameras all over the city, log license plates, and sell service for you to query. This exists and it’s a very profitable business: https://www.engadget.com/2019-09-17-repo-drivers-scan-license-plates.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-09-17-repo-drivers-scan-licens... I think it’s about $20 per query to track a known plate.
- dgellow 6y agoA personal IP address is PII. The same for a license plate. At least under GDPR.
- gambiting 6y agoIn the UK private companies are allowed to scan licence plates though, literally every single supermarket car park has AMPR cameras which record when you shop there. There's usually a plaque somewhere that says "by entering this carpark you allow us to use information about you".
- threedots 6y agoIn Europe/UK an IP is PII. This link explains it: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/key-definitions/what-is-personal-data/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
- StavrosK 6y agoOh nice, that's good to know, thanks!
- mkl 6y agoHaving a warranty is boolean, so can't be personally identifying (though it is personal private information). The license plate is unique to your car, so is personally identifying. Edit: the key term is that it's indirectly identifying: https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr-personal-data/ https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr-personal-data/
- jjgreen 6y agoBeing "called John Smith, living at 12 High Street and having an interest in titty bars" is a boolean too. I'm not sure I'd want that to leak out though, ..., aw crap.
- mkl 6y agoBoolean means there are only two possible values, so the name and address mean that isn't boolean. Only the last bit is, by itself.
- jjgreen 6y agoI was trying to demonstrate that any information can be trivially encoded as booleans -- "my name is John Smilh", "My name is John Brown", ... and so on gives a series of boolean valued statements, and if you know the answer to all of them, then you know the name of the subject. Booleaness is no barrier to information leakage.
- gambiting 6y agoBut BMW provides the warranty - so they know whether they, as in - BMW UK - cover a car with this licence plate or not. They don't need any information about you at all, they have the information they need on their side - so they definitely don't need to ask anyone for permission to access it.
- ratww 6y agoI don't think that's the issue here. The issue is them broadcasting in a Billboard that a BMW nearby doesn't have warranty.
- gambiting 6y agoDepends what the bilboard says. If it says "Hey, BMW EG16WHJ - your warranty is expired!" then yeah, that's probably not ok. But if they detect that a BMW with an expired warranty is stopped near the bilboard and just say "hey, is your BMW warranty expired? Renew today!" then it would be very hard to make an argument against it.