Why License Plate Messages?

My apolgogies in advance - this is a long one...

When I get asked that question I think back to when PL8SCAN was just an idea. At first the obvious answer was to use it to vent road rage. But as we dug into it a little deeper we realized there were so many more possibilities. We realized that the reason the question comes up is that people just assume our cars are like cocoons and we don't even think about the possibility of contacting another driver unless of course something really serious happens. But in that case the only way to do it is to contact the police or the DMV.

But we wondered, what if talking to another driver was as easy as talking to someone you meet walking on the street or at a mall or any place else that actual human contact takes place? What might you say?

There are a lot of obvious "driving" related things that come to mind. Here's some examples
What do your plates mean?
You have a light out.
Did you see that guy hit me?
I can fix your bodywork.
Where did you get those rims?
Cool car!
Saw your sign. I have some ... work I need done

With that basic idea in mind the next thought was how could we let people send these messages with a little more immediacy. The answer we came up with was text messaging - phone calls just seemed a little too intimidating. Before you read further I want to clarify something. We DO NOT encourage or even suggest that you text message while driving - that is just plain dangerous and probably illegal. But - you can have a passenger send the message or just pull over and park safely to send it. PLEASE BE SAFE!

So now take the basic idea to another place - the parking lot. You don't even have to see the driver...
I saw someone ding your car.
This car looks abandoned
Do you really need a handicapped spot?
Great parking spot. Where do I get the "ignore signs" license?

Once you think of it as just another way to talk to someone the possibilities truly become endless...
I waved at your from the blue bug - want to talk?
Party at ... tonight!
You're hot!
Oops - sorry I cut you off
Thanks for being a courteous driver
I'll call for help
I saw your accident
I don't care what your other car is
Saw your sticker... Go Wildcats!

You can see where I'm going with this. The question changes from why to why not. All those drivers (and passengers) we come across are just people. PL8SCAN lets you treat them that way and all the while maintain your privacy just like in person. Messages can be sent anonymously or with a PL8SCAN username so you can get replies without revealing your personal information.

OK - so you still want to vent some road rage. Think about this - your message goes to anyone interested in that plate - shall we say... fleet owners? Instead of taking it out on the road now you have a way to let someone know their driving "needs a little work". Forget those (very few) 800 "How Am I Driving" stickers and phone numbers. Just get the plate and send the message - done!

PL8SCAN won't be for everyone and we know that. If you like your cocoon then just ignore us - but you might want to check if someone has sent you a message. We're not trying tell you that you should send messages - just that you now have an option you didn't have before. Keep us in your communication toolbox with postal mail, phone calls, email, text messages and now PL8 messages.

We hope you'll find our service useful and if you want more let us know. We're constantly evaluating new ideas to give you what you want and keep our users safe.

Till next time...

PL8Box? I don't need no stinking PL8Box...

Hi Folks,

Now that I got some of the safety issues out of the way I thought I'd talk about one of the great features of PL8SCAN. For those of you familiar with how an online dating service works our PL8Box feature should be obvious.

It was simple to allow people to Post messages to a license plate and then let anyone get them but we wondered - what if the person wanted a reply to their message? How could we do that but still protect everyone's privacy. Once you work though it the answer seems obvious but believe me we struggled with it because we wanted to make sure our users felt comfortable that we had protected their privacy.

So it goes like this - every registered member of PL8SCAN gets a PL8Box. It functions pretty much like an email inbox. If you (a member) Post a message at PL8SCAN you can choose to make it anonymous or to attach your username to it. If it's anonymous then of course no one will ever know who wrote it. If you attach your username to it two things can happen. First of all another member can lookup your profile. We covered that earlier in this blog but basically that means that they can see only the information in your profile that YOU allow them to see (and that can NEVER include personal information like phone numbers or addresses). Secondly - and most importantly - they now have a way to reply to your message. With a click on the Reply button for your message a message composition window comes up. The window is pre-addressed to the username of the original message sender (you) and includes a copy of your message. They type in their message and click Submit and voila! - it shows up only in your PL8Box with their username attached to it. From that point on the two of you can communicate within the PL8SCAN site.

I hope I've explained this well. Let me know if not. See you on the road...

Profiles

OK - I'm finally getting back to tackle another issue that's related to safety - Profiles. "Aren't they a way for someone to find out personal about me from my license plate?"

Nope - Nyet - Non - Nein - Ain't gonna happen....

Let's go back to the basic setup. When you join you create a username and a profile. You put as much or as little info in the profile as you want but none of it can be personal info like phone numbers or addresses. You can even go one step further and specify which of this data is visible to other PL8SCAN users. (The non-visible data is used by PL8SCAN to help us improve the service and tailor it to our users).

So now let's pretend Joe the nerd (sorry Joes) wants to "check out" somebody by their license plate. How would he do it at PL8SCAN? (Remember - PL8SCAN.com does NOT have access to any government records nor do we ask anyone to tell us what license plate they own - we just don't have that info.) Rather than explain how about this - My license plate is "Arizona PL8SCAN" and I obviously have a username and profile. I encourage you to contact me and let me know what information you were able to find out about me from PL8SCAN.

Just to clarify - we created the profile feature to help people sort through messages that might get Posted to their plate. For example - let's say you Scan your plate or get an email notice of a Post to it. Before you reply you decide to take a quick look at the profile of the username that Posted it and it says it's a 43 year old guy that lives in a zip code 1,000 miles from you. It's up to you but depending on the message I might guess he got the license plate wrong and choose not to reply to that one. And by the way - even if you did reply it's all within the PL8SCAN system and unless you tell someone your email address on purpose they're not going to find out from your message. And just in case this person decides to start sending you messages you don't want we make it simple to block those messages.

But now I'm getting into PL8Boxes and I'll save that for another time. Hope I helped here folks. Until next time...

Talking about safety

OK - so I lied - I said I was going to talk about Profiles and PL8Boxes on my next post. I decided to talk about safety instead. At our discussion group a concern was expressed that PL8SCAN could enable someone to find out personal information about someone else (your daughter / girlfriend etc). I answered that question and it seems to me that it covers it pretty well so I'll just repeat it here.

There's really no way to "check out" somebody. If you Scan a license
plate all you can find is other messages to it. When you Post a message
you're not given any information about who owns that plate. In fact
PL8SCAN doesn't even have that information.

Text message Posts comes to PL8SCAN and we in turn send a notice to
anyone who has requested notices for that plate. The notice we send out
includes the originators username but not their cell phone number. The
same is true if you reply to that notice.

Finally - you can look for a members' profile with their username but
they control what information is in it. Profiles can NEVER include
personally identifying information like phone numbers and addresses.

I hope this answers your question and concern. We understand that since
PL8SCAN is so new and innovative there's going to be some concerns
about safety and we encourage anyone with questions like this to ask.

You may want to take a look at the blog entry titled "Sticky notes on a
bulletin board" at . It explains how
PL8SCAN works with an analogy that might help make it clearer.

I hope this answers the question about safety. If you still have concerns please feel free to contact us at our help page or post a question on the discussion group.

Then how do you deliver text messages?

Good question. Keep the bulletin board in mind. Lets say you have a license plate you're interested in and you want to know right away whenever a message is posted to that license plate. You could go online every few minutes and Scan for messages but that's not very practical is it.

One of the biggest benefits of membership is that PL8SCAN will do the scanning for you and that's exactly how we deliver text messages. You tell us the license plate you're interested in and whenever there's a message posted to it we'll immediately send you an email and/or a text message if you request it. The email or text message comes from PL8SCAN - NOT from the person that Posted the original message. By acting as the go between we keep both parties anonymous. The sender has no idea if anyone else gets the message unless someone replies.

Text messages do include usernames so when you get one you can reply with the TAG keyword or just ignore it. Once you send a TAG reply the original sender and yourself have now established a private communication via usernames and of course PL8SCAN will continue to show as the sender. No cell phone numbers are ever passed via PL8SCAN text messages unless you add it to a message manually.

If you get text messages you don't want you can either block that username or stop all text messaging at any time with the keyword STOP. You're in complete control and can change things as often as you want.

Next post I'll talk about profiles and PL8Boxes...

Did this one help?

Sticky notes on a bulletin board

We thought one good way to explain what we do and how we do it would be to provide a sort of visual explanation - so here goes...

Imagine a giant bulletin board covered with yellow "sticky" notes. At the top of each note is a license plate and below that is a message - any kind of message. The notes are arranged on the board by order of the license plate on the note. So if you wanted to find messages for a specific license plate you'd just go to the spot on the board where that license plate should be and look for notes with that license plate written on it.

When you Post a message at PL8SCAN in essence all you're doing is creating a sticky note with a license plate and a message and we put it in order on the bulletin board. When you Scan for messages to a license plate you're just looking at the spot on the board where that license plate should be to see if there are any messages.

With this visual in mind hopefully I can now answer the top question we get. How do you know who owns a license plate and is it safe?

The short answers are: We don't and Yes. When someone Posts a message they don't need and don't get any information about the owner of the license plate. PL8SCAN doesn't even have that information. Secondly, when someone Scans for messages they get no information about how wrote them except if the writer was a PL8SCAN member and chose to include their username in the message.

Hoping to help...

When we were preparing to launch PL8SCAN we struggled over how to explain it. Because it's such a new concept we really couldn't compare it to anything and say "Hey we're the best ...!". We worried that although it's a simple concept most people would probably form an opinion quickly before they really understood what we do and how we do it. So what to do? Short and simple or long detailed explanations? We decided to try a little of both. Short and to the point as in our flash piece on the Home page plus detailed explanations as in the FAQ.

Turns out we could have done a better job because it's apparent that there are misunderstandings about PL8SCAN. We've read about safety and legality concerns, that it's only useful to members, that we only do text messaging, that we only have canned messages etc. In order to address some of these issues we felt a blog would be a good forum for people to read and comment about their specific questions. Thus this page was born. We'll attempt to address some of these misunderstandings in future posts but feel free to ask and comment here anytime. We'll answer as quick as we can. If you don't see what you're looking for here feel free to email us at PL8-Feedback@PL8SCAN.com. Thanks for stopping by!