There is another thing to it. If someone that knows that the car CT-90-GEO is usually parked on a given house at night and then sees a post on social media that shows the car CT-90-GEO 90 miles away at a party, the person will know that the house is probably empty and thus vulnerable to a burglar.

@Overmind, the case you explain is local, for Romania, in other EU countries this is not the case

It's one example (to make it simple and obvious). In any country people select plate numbers to correspond to something they have/like/etc. Here's how it's on each of them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Europe

@Overmind, I am sorry, but your example limit to absurd. And Wikipedia article present info which is not relevant to person.

This is only a minor part of it. The main part is that someone who knows your license plate knows where you are from the picture.

If you put your initials and birth year on public broadcast, you can't blame someone for seeing it. I agree that license plates are privacy-sensitive (they're PII, even if they're completely randomized like in the Netherlands), but your reasoning doesn't make any sense.

I suspect GDPR may have some part to play in all this too - I don't know the specifics, but if my company publishes a picture of George's number plate, I'm potentially disclosing private information.

@Luc That's irrelevant. In Italy the license plates are "random" but are still PI protected like any other PI.

So another guy named George was born in 1990 and lives in Constanta county. What will the license plate number of his car?

@Bakuriu Please re-read my comment. I said: "they're PII, even if they're completely randomized". You said: "license plates are "random" but are still PI protected". We agree. Also, you said: "In Italy the license plates are [...] PI", but that is not because of Italy's law but because of the GDPR.

@Farhan could use something similar like GRG instead, but that's not really too relevant. Luc in some countries you can get the ones that come by normal order (1st one free with lowest number/ letter) or with a little extra cash you can choose the plate number if it's free. Some prefer not to pay extra, some prefer to choose the number.

@Farhan Well if you paid me I could find out a list of potential license plates. It is possible.

@forest you can check that freely online in my country. :D

@T.Sar: I like the way you think :P

@Farhan It is not true that license plate numbers are assigned like this in Romania. Only the CT gives you certain information. 'Overmind' must have meant that the owner can pay to customize the other letters/digits if they don't want to just be assigned a combination. This answer was phrased in a somewhat misleading way and some of the commenters assumed that the code is always assigned based on name/birthday by the government. It is not the case.