My point is that it's pointless to cover your plates because anyone who sees you on the road can write it down and find out who you are. And the people who live in your area are a greater threat than we are. So it's a waste of time.
I do it because of data brokers scraping the info. It’s not because of physical people (though there is that too, because on here I’m showing off things of value not otherwise visible to people I pass on the road.) Any text in a photo is scraped and indexed along with it, and it’s then used to make connections between disparate data sources also collected by the same companies.
It also allows people to connect real world you to online you, again something you may not want for reasons like build threads of stuff to steal, what tools are in my garage, and like in my case next Saturday, when I’m going to be not only away from my garage and house, but that I won’t even have cell coverage to catch notifications from a camera.
Next time you see a built up vehicle, search their license plate in an image search and if they post pics of it with their license plate unobstructed you’ll find the forums they visit almost instantly.
For example, do one for Primezx license plate and a picture of you is the first image result. Change it to Primezx Xterra and other versions and there is your truck sitting outside your (former) house and that brings you to everything else.
So again, it’s not just about hiding my address, it’s about preventing an instantaneous and mostly permanent connection between multiple facets of my life that enables not only people but companies and data brokers to remove what tiny shred of online privacy we have left. It takes about two seconds of coloring it in on the phone and is absolutely worth the time if you understand how the data can be used.