Buying a used car is a good investment, but only if you approach this issue sensibly. Not only super minimal odometer measures, lovely fresh-painted body or brand should be considered, but also the vehicle's ownership and theft history.
If you're going to buy a pre-owned vehicle, you might and even should be interested in its ownership history. Knowing this information is an important key to making a successful purchase. This will definitely shelter you from buying an automobile with a problematic history.
You'll never know anything about the previous car owners if you don't know the vehicle identification number. A VIN is a number that consists of 17 alphanumeric digits and is located on the windshield-dashboard, on the driver's door or elsewhere on the car, depending on its model.
Every car's VIN number is inseparable from the vehicle's owner, and DMV keeps these data, that's why it's hard but possible to find this person by VIN. Yet, there are some obstacles: confidential information about car owners is controlled by the Driver's Privacy Protection Act in order to stop illegal purposes. You should provide the DMV only a considerable reason of requesting such data. Only government agencies like police or courts have an inherent right to do a VIN check owner search without limitations.
Besides, VIN check owner lookup is essential in such cases as:
- You're sick and tired of a non-familiar car, which is regularly parking near your house;
- Someone is waylaying you, but you don't know who;
- You receive threats from a stranger who owns a car;
- You cannot stop someone's constant parking on your territory;
- An accident happened, but the driver who's guilty ran away;
- The mentioned above situations are solvable, but only if you consult the police.
Vehicle Owner Information
As we've mentioned above, neither owner names, nor addresses are shown during an online owner lookup VIN. The Driver's Privacy Protection Act restricts the spreading of such data.
Can anyone find owner of vehicle by vin number online? Yes. Pay a visit to any VIN check site and get this information easily. Print the key into the search box, press "Enter" - and you'll immediately see a report about the car's history, including the data about the previous owner (or several owners). The important thing is that not a single VIN check site includes names, addresses of the car owners and other deeply private details. It's a popular misconception that VIN lookup sites illegally provide private information: actually, they don't. You'll only see, how many owners the precise car had (if indicated on checkout page), and in which way these people treated the vehicle. You'll see in which states every ownership took place, and in which car businesses the vehicle participated. If the previous car's owner was an insurance company, if the vehicle is a salvaged lemon, if it was ever stolen, - all this information can be seen on any VIN search site in a couple of clicks - just print the 17 digits into the search box and press the "Check" button.
A VIN code has a relatively short history but has become irreplaceable since the moment it appeared. VIN codes began to be implemented in 1954. Due to the lack of normalized requirements for these numbers, a variety of formats could be used by the manufacturers.
In 1981, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the US standardized the requirements for the identification number format. The standard demanded that all road vehicles used for sale should have a VIN code of 17 characters - Arabic numerals and Latin alphabets, except for the I (i), O (o) and Q (q) (to prevent the possibility of their confusion with numbers 1 and 0).