If you’re over the age of 16, chances are you’ve done business with your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (aka the DMV).
If so, there’s something you should know…
The results of a recent investigation by the folks at Vice.com have confirmed that the bureaucrats running the DMV in virtually every state are selling the personal information of drivers to third parties.
Of course we all know that our info is always subject to being shared with law enforcement agencies and other government entities, but the DMV’s sales of driver information goes far beyond that.
Numerous private companies and organizations are buying the names, addresses, phone numbers and other personal info from the DMVs for a plethora of different purposes.
As you might expect, private detectives are among their biggest customers for driver data, and many of the ways they use the purchased data are pretty unsavory.
In case you’re wondering whether the DMV can legally sell your data, they can thanks to provisions contained within the Drivers Privacy Protection Act, a law that was passed back in the 1990s for the stated purpose of protecting the data you supply to the DMV.
Leave it to Congress to pass a law that does exactly the opposite of what its title says.
Bottom line: There’s absolutely nothing you can do to prevent your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles from selling your personal information to pretty much anyone who is willing to pay for it.
What you can do is contact your representatives in the Congress and your state legislature and let them know that you oppose this practice by the DMV.
On a related note, have you heard about the push for Real ID that DMV’s nationwide are making?
Watch the short video below to see how applications for Real ID are making wait times at many DMV offices even longer than they were in the past.
Note: As always, you can watch the video at full screen by clicking the “square” icon that will pop up in the lower-right corner of the video after it begins playing.