Find My VIN! Challenges when searching for vehicles on marketplaces

At Legentic, we are committed to fighting financial crime through our advanced data platform. We support insurance professionals by providing insights into open data available for vehicles, offering comprehensive information on historic market life cycles and market values. The Legentic Platform also empowers users to locate stolen vehicles, leveraging our innovative solutions and data-driven approaches.

This article delves into the specific challenges of searching for Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) on online marketplaces and how Legentic's cutting-edge methods help overcome these obstacles to find the right vehicle.

In the world of online vehicle marketplaces, finding the right car or motorcycle can be a daunting task, especially when crucial information like the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is incomplete or hidden. Vehicles are equipped with a unique serial number known as the VIN, which is composed of 17 characters, both letters and digits. This number encodes the vehicle’s unique features, specifications, and manufacturer information. However, due to privacy rules and varying regulations across different countries, searching for a VIN can be more challenging than it seems.

At Legentic, we’ve developed innovative solutions to help users overcome these challenges and find the right vehicle, even when the complete VIN is not readily available.

The importance of VIN sanitization

The VIN is a critical identifier for vehicles, often more precise than license plates. However, not all countries allow VINs to be shared online. For instance, VINs are rarely shared in France and the Netherlands, while countries like Norway and Finland have a higher VIN presence in advertisements. Additionally, in some countries where VINs were commonly shared, sellers have started redacting the last six characters. This practice is particularly common in the US and Germany.

Despite these obstacles, Legentic ensures the accuracy and usability of VINs through a comprehensive sanitization process. This process involves stripping off any whitespaces and transliterating letters that are not allowed (I, Q, and O) into numerals (1 and 0). The sanitization process is applied both when a VIN is stored and when it is searched, ensuring that the VIN is in a valid form before any search operation is performed.

Navigating the challenges of incomplete VINs

Performing a traditional search with the complete 17-character VIN often yields fewer results due to the increasing trend of hiding the last identification digits. To address this issue, Legentic employs a method called Prefix VIN Search. This technique involves truncating the 17-character VIN down to 10 characters and using this truncated version to find all stored VINs that start with those 10 characters. This approach significantly increases the chances of finding relevant vehicles even when the complete VIN is not available.

Decoding the VIN for better search results

Another innovative solution is VIN decoding at search time. This method leverages the fact that specific characteristics of the vehicle are encoded within the VIN. By decoding the VIN, we can extract valuable information such as the make, model, engine size, production date, and other specific details. This decoded information can then be used to perform additional searches, bringing users closer to finding the vehicle they are looking for, even if the VIN is not part of the advertisement.

Conclusion

Searching for vehicles on online marketplaces can be challenging, especially when complete VINs are not available. At Legentic, we’ve developed sophisticated methods to overcome these challenges. By sanitizing VINs, using Prefix VIN Search, and decoding VINs to extract detailed information, we help our users find the right vehicle more effectively.

The structure of the VIN allows us to create alternative search methods that yield better and more comprehensive results. These innovative approaches ensure that even with partial or hidden VINs, our users can still find the vehicles they need.