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Your vehicle identification number (VIN) is a 17-character number that’s unique to your car, giving details about its product number, the country it was made in and even its accident history. A car insurance company can use the VIN to find identifying information about your car quickly — though it’s not required to get a quote.
When you’re buying car insurance, insurance companies ask for your VIN to get the specifications on your car. These details help the company give an accurate quote since the make and model, mileage, structural safety and any accidents you’ve caused affect your insurance rate.
Details that your VIN tells about your car:
Your car insurance rate may change if you use a VIN to get quotes, but it won’t always increase. The VIN simply helps your quotes to be as accurate as possible. You’ll have to give the insurance company your VIN before finalizing the policy, so you speed up your application process by doing it ahead of time.
If you’re unsure about a brand’s privacy protection while getting quotes, give your car’s make, model and accident history instead of using your VIN. Then before finalizing your policy, check for warning signs that a car insurance company might be a scam.
If it’s legit, you can look on the company’s website or search online for the company’s name and privacy policy. After reading through the privacy statement, decide whether to give your VIN for an accurate quote or to finalize your policy.
Using your VIN for a car insurance quote works similarly to getting quotes without one, except that it might speed up the process. What to expect:
Since your VIN can tell you a lot about your car, you can use a VIN check to:
The short answer is that you can’t find a car’s owner by running its VIN — at least not legally. When you run a car’s VIN through car records sites like Carfax, you’ll find limited information about its owners.
Carfax gives details like the number of previous owners, any accidents they had and whether the car was used for personal or commercial reasons. And the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s VIN tool tells you if a car has a salvage title or is reported stolen.
To find a vehicle’s owner, you need to ask local police to run its license plate number. The police may provide only limited information to you or may reach out to the car’s owner in specific situations, like if the car was stolen.
Your car insurance company uses the VIN to crosscheck information about your car’s make, model and accident reports, helping the company give you the most accurate quote possible. However, most companies don’t require the VIN for the quoting process if you’d prefer to keep this unique number private until you make a final decision.
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