In Sweden, there are several search services that show ownership information and history for cars.
The services are popular tools among car buyers, but can also be used for less noble purposes.
Now an investigation submitted to the government recommends putting an end to this through a limitation in the constitution.
Shows where the car owner lives
In Sweden, there are several search services where by entering the registration number of a car you can check, for example, its inspection history, whether it has been involved in an accident, or how many owners it has had.
It is also possible to look up who the owner is, as well as his address.
Publishing personal data would normally have been a violation of the GDPR regulation, but search services are protected by the constitution in the same way as newspapers.
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Proposes limitation of the constitution
Investigator Daniel Gustavsson now wants to limit this constitutional protection, as it has been established that this type of search service can violate personal integrity.
The risk is also that the easily accessible information about who owns which car, and where they live, is used for dubious purposes.
– We can see that some of the information provided by the services is used by criminals to map crime victims and relatives in conflicts, map crime victims for fraud and that is a societal problem, said the Minister of Justice Gunnar Strommer (M) during a press conference.
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Already taken action
The proposal to limit constitutional protection for search services must now be sent for referral by the government.
Already now, however, the search services themselves have begun to take action.
One of the largest sites, Billverfägden.se, now requires logging in with BankID to be able to see owner information, and has removed the connection to the service Ratsit, which shows more information about the car owner.
In a comment to We Car Owners points out though Christian Nilsson on Vehicle data that vehicle data may still be available to request from the Swedish Transport Agency via the web, SMS or e-mail.
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