Checking a car's mileage by VIN or license plate number

Why can't you just punch the owner in the car?

Because you are trying to identify a person’s personal data, and they are protected by law (by the same name, by the way). The vehicle owner’s data is stored in the traffic police database and is not subject to disclosure. The traffic police officers themselves can request the owner’s data, but within the framework of official authority (clause 6.4 of the Administrative Regulations), but they do not have the right to distribute it just like that at your request (written official or oral on the road).

Therefore, you will not be able to obtain the following information:

trying to find out the owner through an online request on the official website of the traffic police for any reason,
through a traffic police inspector on the road, simply stating the car’s license plate number, VIN or any other data,
not in any Internet service - for 2021, the maximum you can get is data about the car itself and its photographs at best,
by any other legal means.

What is the car body number?

Not everyone knows that the VIN code and the body number are completely different things.

Vin is the vehicle number assigned to the vehicle by the manufacturer. It consists of 17 characters and contains information about the manufacturer and characteristics of the car, including the year of manufacture. You can find the VIN code on the integral parts of the body or chassis on special nameplates.

The body number is a code consisting of 9-12 alphabetic and digital characters, which is applied to a special plate or the body itself under the hood of the car. This code encrypts the make and body type of the car and its serial number.

The VIN code contains more data than the body number, but you can identify any vehicle and find out its history by knowing any of these numbers. The Autohistory report in both cases will contain the same detailed information.

The best paid method is AVinfo

The service is represented by a website, a Telegram bot and browser extensions and allows you to obtain certain information on the license plate number of the car.

It’s just that you are unlikely to find out the address, number and other personal data of the owner, but often a phone number is indicated, and there will also be a large range of information in the “Registration History” report, where you can find the main thing - the owner’s full name ( in rare cases, this data may not be be ), which will significantly simplify the search process further through social networks, for example.

Here is an example of this report from the official AVinfo website:

Information with photographs of the car will also be valuable - in many cases it will be possible to identify the place where it is parked, and the likelihood that this is a parking lot near the house where the owner of the car lives is quite high. But not all cars in the Avinfo report are presented with photographs, which complicates the task.

Important! Recently there have been problems when paying by phone. When requesting a report in this way, information about the absence of payment data may be provided. Therefore, it is better not to use this payment method.

The car inspection service is paid. One check costs 150 rubles (you need to order one full report to obtain information about the owners of the vehicle). You can also order unlimited access packages.

Instructions for obtaining owner data online

First of all, you will need the Telegram application; you can download it on any phone operating system.
Next, enter @AvinfoBot in the search bar and add the Avinfo bot.
Write a message to the bot “/reg” and register - you will be required to enter an SMS message to confirm your phone number.
Next, write a message in the form of the license plate number, the owner of the car with which you want to find out, in the format “X000XX000” (the first letter of the number, 3 digits of the number, 2 more letters and the region).
As a result of the request, you will be given information and, if there is a photograph, a list of available reports. You need to select “Full AVinfo Report”.
You will need to pay for the report (you need to select the “Pay 1 report”) option. To pay, you will be redirected to the website av100.ru.
As a result, you will receive a report that should include the registration history of the car and its current owner.

Another paid way

A similar service, which with the same degree of probability will give out the phone number and last name, first name and patronymic of the owner of the car according to its license plate number, is Avtobot.net. But, unlike the above, this service is presented only by a website.

Why did we bring him? It can also show the contact information of the car owner by number, but it uses a different database than Avinfo, so there is also a chance of finding a person here if you unsuccessfully tried to do this in the previous service.

How to decipher the year of manufacture symbol

The VIN code sign indicating the year of manufacture of the car can be either a number or a letter. A series of models, the production of which was carried out between 1971 and 1979, has a number from 1 to 9 in place of the year designation, in accordance with the last digit of the year.

From the editor: Preparing to buy a car in Germany. part 1

Models from the period 1980–2000 are marked with letters:

1980 - A;
1981 - B;
1982 - C;
1983 - D;
1984 - E;
1985 - F;
1986 - G;
1987 - H;
1988 - J;
1989 - K;
1990 - L;
1991 - M;
1992 - N;
1993 - P;
1994 - R;
1995 - S;
1996 - T;
1997 - V;
1998 - W;
1999 - X;
2000 - Y.

A car produced from 2001 to 2009 will be designated by numbers similar to the period 1971–1979. From 2010 and up the corresponding letters again appear. As you can see, the marking of the year of manufacture is repeated with a period of 30 years. This is enough to identify the model, since the remaining numbers in the VIN code for cars, say, 1975 and 2005, will still be different.

Exceptions to the rules

Individual corporations that do not operate in accordance with the global standard may indicate issue date information using different VIN serial characters. Sometimes the body number itself even differs in the number of characters. This applies, for example, to Mitsubishi Pajero SUVs, which are produced in the UAE. On these cars, the VIN code consists of 14 characters. By the way, it is officially believed that the standard itself is purely advisory in nature and does not oblige companies to indicate the release date of the car. Because of this, in rare cases, such data in the body number may be absent altogether.

Model and calendar year - what's the difference?

The 10th digit of the VIN code, as a rule, indicates not the calendar, but the model year of manufacture of the car. What is the difference - the actual month of manufacture of the car and that indicated in the VIN code may differ for a period of up to six months.

This is done for the purpose of having time to transport the car to the region of sale, register it, etc. Thus, dealers will be able to offer customers fresh cars in their showrooms, and the manufacturer will have time to sell out almost all produced units before the start of the next calendar year.

10 character of the VIN code, indicating the year of manufacture of the car, can be either a number or a letter

A similar practice was adopted during the development of the ICO 3779-1983 standard, created in the USA by the Association of Automotive Engineers. In forming the standard for body number designation, they used the principle of the sales approach of North American automobile corporations. Summer is the period of car shows, when these companies showed their new models to the public. And the production date of these models was always indicated as early as next year.

October 1 is often taken as the starting point for a new model range. This is how the aforementioned WAG works, in particular. But the final version still depends on the specific manufacturer.

Addition

The year of manufacture of a car can be determined not only by the VIN. It is also indicated by the numbers and condition of individual parts, for example, under-hood wiring. If the car's windshield has not been replaced, look at the last 2 digits on it - this is the year the glass was manufactured. Naturally, it should be the same as the year of production of the entire car. Another way to find out the year of manufacture of a car is to study the passport and certificates of the technical device, which also indicates the period of manufacture. And not just study, but compare the data indicated in the documents with those contained on the plate with the VIN code. Only in this case will you be able to 100% identify the year of manufacture of the car and prevent yourself from being deceived when purchasing.

The best free, but difficult - traffic police

So, it is possible to identify a person by his car almost 100%, but this method will require material damage and illegal actions from you.

We are talking about an administrative investigation, and, of course, you do not yet understand what we are talking about. But in fact, everything is quite simple!

You can find the owner of a car by number if you and the car with this number appear in an administrative case. To be more precise, within the framework of an administrative investigation. The basis for its initiation is the presence of an administrative offense.

169. The basis for issuing a determination to initiate a case of an administrative offense and conduct an administrative investigation is the identification of an administrative offense in the field of road traffic, during the proceedings on which an examination or other procedural actions are carried out that require significant time costs.

Thus, we need the desired owner of the car to have violated something. Then, based on your complaint about such a violation, an administrative investigation will be initiated against him or her.

But this is not enough - you will not be allowed to find out the details of the owner of the car, since you are not a participant in the case. But you may have the status of a victim, and then, on the basis of Article 25.2 of the Administrative Code, you have the right to get acquainted with all the materials of the case (at the traffic police department where the case is being conducted, upon request). And in the case materials, as part of the administrative investigation, the first step is to establish the owner of the car on which the offense was committed.

That is, it is easy to find out the owner by car number in 2021 if you and the person you are looking for are participants in the same business. Moreover, it doesn’t matter who is the culprit and who is the victim, both persons have the right to get acquainted with the case materials, which include the owner of the car (the culprit has the right to get acquainted on the basis of Article 25.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).

Of course, deliberately ramming a car or making a fake accident in order to find out its owner is unreasonable, illegal and expensive (the insurance company under compulsory motor liability insurance will pay the victim, but if the damage was caused intentionally, it will issue recourse to the culprit). That is why we indicated at the beginning of the article that this method, although almost 100% working, is expensive and complex.

In fact, there is a much simpler way. The same conditions, the same accident, but... in the Administrative Code there is no liability for false denunciation. The main thing is that the information in your denunciation does not constitute grounds for initiating a criminal case.

To summarize, the step-by-step instructions for obtaining information about the owner of the car will look like this:

as part of an accident, one of the participants (the victim or the culprit) reports this event (moreover, it is illegal to falsify it, but there is no punishment for this),
A traffic police officer is obliged to initiate an administrative investigation if there is information about a possible violation (your denunciation),
As part of this investigation, the first step is to find out the identities of the participants in the accident, if they are unknown,
You, as a victim or potential culprit, have the right to familiarize yourself with the case materials, which include the owner of the car.

Something else useful for you:

Is it possible to drive without license plates, registration, insurance and taxes legally and how?
What are the changes to traveling abroad with debts since October 2017?
New car register and government decree on the registration procedure

What can you find out about a car by its body number?

number of owners;
history of registration actions;
participation in an accident;
number in theft;
being on bail;
presence of restrictions;
insurance company data;
history of repair work;
data from foreign services and more.

All this will help you determine whether the model you have chosen is suitable as a reliable means of transportation, or whether you should refuse to buy it and find a more suitable option for a comfortable and safe ride and no problems associated with the damaged history of the car.

Other methods to find out the owner by car license plate number

Other methods to break a person through the state. his car number is much less effective, because, as we noted above, this is personal data, and it is difficult to obtain it legally. However, let's list a number of possible methods known for 2021.

Ask a traffic police inspector

The probability of success is negligible, but not zero, especially if this same inspector knows you personally. Yes, police officers are prohibited from disclosing personal data of citizens, including full names, addresses and telephone numbers of people along with related information about them, including car details. But this does not mean that the inspector will refuse you in any case.

In practice, employees very rarely comply with such a request. But you need to ask for it very politely and carefully. In addition, your good intentions are important. If you tell an employee, for example, that you need to punch a person in order to inflict physical beatings on him, then, obviously, the probability of refusal will increase to 100%. And then an administrative or even criminal case may be brought against you.

Internet sites

Another practically unworkable method. There are a number of resources on the Internet that collect databases of people by license plate numbers. Typically, information is collected in two ways:

information about the numbers and their owners is taken from an existing database (the same AVinfo, for example),
users themselves add such information along with complaints about dangerous driving or boorish behavior of drivers.

Why is this not a working method?! Because the likelihood that you will be able to find out the owner by the car number using this method in 2021 tends to zero. The maximum you can find is a photo of a car parked in the yard of the house.

Portal of judicial acts

This method is suitable for cars whose drivers were involved in legal proceedings. It consists of searching to see if the car’s license plate number is listed in the database of judicial acts of the Russian Federation – Sudact.ru.

However, it was not for nothing that we placed it last. This method, although free, is ineffective. The fact is that for a successful search, two factors need to coincide at once:

the person you are looking for has been involved in at least one lawsuit involving a vehicle with a current license plate,
This number is not hidden when posting a decision, ruling or ruling of the court.

And it is precisely the second factor that makes this method ineffective, since most court decisions are posted with hidden registration plates of the car. But suddenly you get lucky!