You don’t need to feel like you’re going in blind when you buy a car anymore, because the internet has made it easier than ever to look vehicle owners up with just their license plate numbers. The records that are tied to a car’s plate number can tell you all sorts of things about that car and help you avoid any scams or fraudulent activities.
If you need to run an Illinois license plate lookup, this guide will show you exactly how you can do it in the quickest, simplest way possible, and it will explain what you can learn from a plate number.
The Best Way to Run an Illinois License Plate Lookup
All you need to search for a car by its plate number in Illinois is a site that offers a reverse license plate search option. Sites that sift through public data, such as background check sites, often have this option available, and FreeBackgroundCheck.org is the best of the bunch.
Here’s the fastest way to pull up more info on a car using just its plate number:
- Visit FreeBackgroundCheck.org.
- Switch the search to a license plate number search. You can do this by clicking the Plate header. By default, name searches are selected.
- Type the plate number you have into the field.
- Click the State dropdown menu, and then choose Illinois.
- Hit the Search button.
The site will then look through all the data it has available from public records, the deep web and other sources to track down the registered owner tied to a plate number. Once it does, it will provide the following car details right off the bat:
- Model year
- Manufacturer
- Model
- Trim
If you just want to confirm the basic details on the car or make sure a license plate swap wasn’t done, then you’ll have all the info you need already. You can click the View Report option to check out much more on the car.
Now, this isn’t the only way to search for a car using the license plate number. Another option is going through the DMV, and you could visit a local DMV office yourself in person, call the DMV or mail a request to it. Although all these methods can work, the method outlined above will get you the information you want much more quickly.
What a Reverse License Plate Search Can Bring Up
Since you now know how to look up a car by its license plate, let’s look at what you can find out through a search and how it can help you. The most likely situation when you would want to look up a car this way would be if it’s for sale and you’re thinking of buying it. Here’s the information you can pull up through a plate number lookup.
Owner Information
There are plenty of situations when you would want to find the owner of a vehicle. If you’re thinking of spending thousands on a car to buy it, you obviously want to know who owns this vehicle to confirm that the owner and the seller are one and the same. While you can look at the vehicle registration information for this, there’s always the chance that has been doctored. In that case, a license plate lookup would reveal the truth.
It’s also simply good to know how many owners a car has had, because that can indicate how well people have taken care of a car. Cars that bounce from owner to owner usually don’t get the same treatment as cars that owners have for the long haul.
VIN Information
When you’re inspecting a car, it’s good to look at the vehicle identification number (VIN). This is another type of identifier cars have, just like the plate number, and it can also help you look up information on the car. But like registrations, VIN numbers can be doctored if the seller wants to deceive buyers. When you search for a plate number, you can verify that the VIN that the car should have is the same one you saw on the car.
Vehicle History Reports
Whenever possible, it’s good to buy a car that doesn’t have any red flags on its record, such as accidents. Even when a car is repaired after it has been in a crash, its structural integrity may not be the same as before. You won’t know about these red flags unless you look up the vehicle history reports. You may still decide to buy the car regardless, but when you know about its past, you can use that information to negotiate a lower price for yourself.
Conclusion
An online license plate lookup is a valuable option to have whenever you need to find out more on a car. With just a plate number, you can have detailed records, including ownership records and the car’s history, in only seconds. You can also lookup license plates in Louisiana and do a reverse license plate search in Kentucky and do a Kansas license plate lookup as well.
