Blurring State Registration Numbers

[jimh]

I guess state registration numbers are now to be considered as secret personal information, as many boat sellers seem to be blurring out the state registration number of their boat when listing it for sale and showing a photograph of the hull near the bow. This seems to suggest that having a boat's state registration number will lead to some exposure of personal information about the seller that the seller wants to keep secret

Q1: where does one go to enter a boat state registration number online in order to discover secret personal information about the person who registered the boat?

[Moderator's note: this thread as been separated from another discussion and moved to THE GAM for discussion.]

[Adare77]

Where does one go to enter a boat state registration number online in order to discover secret personal information about the person who registered the boat?

https://boathistoryreport.com/

[jimh]

boathistoryreport.com

Thanks for pointing to that source. I never heard of it. I tried the source recommended using the state registration number of my own boat. All the data I got was the boat was made by Boston Whaler, its model year, its serial number, and the state of registration. Therefore there was NO secret information about the boat owner revealed.

Regarding the information obtained:

• the boat was identified as a Boston Whaler which is not particularly revealing; if I were selling my boat I would not keep secret the information that the boat is a Boston Whaler
• the state in which the boat was registered, but the fact that I had the state registration number ALREADY contained that information because each state is identified by the prefix in the registration number;
• the model year data, but this data probably came from the state registration, which is often based on nothing more than the owner's declaration or something a seller wrote on a Bill of Sale, so it is probably not particularly authoritative; in my search example the model year was correct, because only it was correctly was submitted to the state at the time of registration; and
• the serial number, which is this case was also correct, but again that is only because that information was correctly submitted when the boat was registered, and was not the result of an independent inspection by a third part or by a state regulator or by anyone actually inspecting the boat in person

Essentially, all the information revealed by the search was information that anyone looking at the boat could have obtained in a simple visual inspection in a few minutes.

Apparently you can buy a more detailed report at a cost of $60. However, there is no guarantee that the report will contain any secret personal information about the boat owner. And I doubt that anyone coming across a photograph of, say, a 57-year-old 13-foot boat is going to spend $60 to discover something about the owner from the state registration number.

Q2: what is gained by a seller of a boat when the seller intentionally obscures the boat's state registration number in any photographs?

[Adare77]

Apparently you can buy a more detailed report at a cost of $60. However, there is no guarantee that the report will contain any secret personal information about the boat owner.

Boathistoryreport.com is just one example.

Any boat that has been repowered with a Yamaha can be looked up on YMBS by someone with access to it. Information on YMBS includes the full name and address of the owner.

Mercury warranty registration offers the same info.

[jimh]

Any boat that has been re-powered with a Yamaha can be looked up on YMBS by someone with access to it. Information on YMBS includes Full name and address of the owner.

Q3: Re looking up a Yamaha or Mercury engine: don't you need to know something very specific about the engine, like the SERIAL NUMBER to use this source?

Q4: can ANYONE use these engine-specific websites?

From what I can tell, "YMBS" is a dealer-only website for authorized Yamaha dealers.

Q5: do you mean that anyone can use "YMBS" and enter a state registration number and find the name and address of the boat owner?

[jimh]

By the way, you seem very familiar with these sources, which makes me ask:

Q6: are you a boat dealer or otherwise in the business of selling boats?

[Adare77]

VIN number of the boat, the motor or a state registration number can all be used through these applications.

A boat does not have a VIN number. Only vehicles have VIN numbers.

Could you please go back to Q2 and reply to that question.

[Adare77]

Q7: are you a boat dealer or otherwise in the business of selling boats?

Yes. I work in the marine industry but I am not on this website for business reasons.

[Adare77]

A boat does not have a VIN number. Only vehicles have VIN numbers.

VIN in the boating world is HIN (hull identification number) [The hull identification numbers] gives you the acronym of the manufacturer, the number in production of that model followed by the last 2 digits of the year.

The only information you would gain from these applications [are the] current registered owners name, address, where it was purchase, and potentially the information of the sales person.

[jimh]

...HIN (hull identification number)...gives you the acronym of the manufacturer, the number in production of that model followed by the last 2 digits of the year.

Thanks. I am very familiar with the federal hull identifications numbers that have been required on boats produced and sold in the USA following the legislation known as the Safe Boating Act of 1971.

You do not get an "acronym" for the manufacturer, you get the Manufacturer Identity Code or MIC. You do not get any information about the number of boats of that model that have been built. You just get a alpha-numeric string that is associated with that particular hull. It does not tell you how many hulls of that type have been made.

Also, the HIN gives more information than you mentioned, as it can give you the model year and the month of production. See the FAQ for a comprehensive explanation:

Q2: Where is the Hull Identification Number
https://continuouswave.com/whaler/reference/FAQ/#Q2

But, again, you can get that same information by looking at the boat and finding the HIN. But I have never seen anyone BLUR OUT THE HIN on a picture of their boat. I am asking about the state registration numbers.

Q7: Where is the secret personal information about the boat owner or the boat registrant that will be protected by obscuring the state registration decals coming into play here? There in none of that in the HIN.

[Adare77]

...You do not get any information about the number of boats of that model that have been built.

Maybe not for Boston Whaler, but most manufacturer's five-digit production number after the “MIC” gives that information. The five-digit number is broken into into two numbers the first two numbers usually reference the boat model, the following three numbers usually represent the number in production of that specific model.

Q7: Where is the secret personal information about the boat owner or the boat registrant that will be protected by obscuring the state registration decals coming into play here? There in none of that in the HIN.

New [outboard engine] warranty registration is linked to the boat HIN and the state registration.

[superdave_gv]

As unlikely as it may seem, I recall around 2005 that the state of Georgia had a downloadable file of all registrations in the state. It included state decal HIN, motor, owner address, etc. I did a quick search to see if it was still available and happy I didn’t see it. But 20 years later I would still be hesitant to post a state registration number online.

ASIDE
Hi Jim--I haven’t posted in some time as I am “between Whalers”. Glad to see you are well!

[jimh]

... recall around 2005 that the state of Georgia had a downloadable file of all registrations in the state. It included state decal HIN, motor, owner address, etc. I did a quick search to see if it was still available and happy I didn’t see it.

I think that in the early days of companies and government agencies creating internet resources there probably were some instances of them providing a bit too much information to the public.

In some situations, there is still plenty of information available on-line from government agencies that might be considered a bit too public. For example, if you have the tail number of an aircraft you can usually look up that aircraft in an FAA database and get the name of the owner and some other information. However, in many cases, the name of the owner is just some LLC corporation, so you don't exactly get the name of the owner or his address. The same with the FCC website. If you have an FCC radio STATION license (of any type) you then will have a callsign. If someone knows your call sign, they can look up the licensee of that station and get information about them, maybe their name.

As for knowing a boat's state registration number, three sources have been mentioned so far, the pay-for-information website that costs $60 to use, and two engine manufacturer private dealer-only websites that would nominally only be available to authorized dealers, as being able to reveal personal information about the boat owner.

In the case of those engine manufacturer website, I would suspect that you probably need to know something about the engine, like its serial number, in order to get to more information. I can't say for sure, of course, because I am not an authorized dealer of a particular engine manufacturer and so far as I can tell I CANNOT USE those websites to see if they permit searching on state registration numbers as the only known information. But I would be surprised if they have that feature.

Getting back to the initial inquiry, I have not seen any free, on-line information resource where I could obtain information about a boat owner just by having the boat's state registration number.

I am not sufficiently curious to see if I could get owner information if I spent $60 on that pay-to-search website.

But there does seem to be an anomaly in the existence of such a search site: how did the search site get their information? Did ALL 50 states suddenly just send the guy who created that website all the information about their registered boats? Maybe you can get it from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. But usually you still have to pay for the time and effort it took the government agency to comply with your request, if your request is something covered in the Act.

But I am still skeptical that having a state registration number for a boat means you are able to get the owner's personal information from on-line sources without having to pay a fee. And, even more ironic, if a guy is selling a boat on-line, he generally will provide personal information so he can be contacted, like a telephone number or an email address. And, anyone that is about to buy a boat is surely going to know the owner's name because typically as part of the transaction the buyer will require the seller to disclose their name.

An Old Anecdote
Many years ago I was in the market for a Boston Whaler boat. I found an advertisement in a newspaper classified. The seller gave his telephone number. I called him, and we arranged a meeting so he could show me photographs of the boat, which he explained was kept at quite a distance away, and as it was winter, was not really accessible at the moment. The seller proposed meeting me at a small coffee shop that was mutually convenient to both of us. I guess he did not want me to know where he lived. I can understand that privacy.