Over a decade ago I used to watch a repo guy out of Utah, and he was using license plate scanners, looking for vehicles in a commercial database his scanner populated along with others… And he did a lot of title loan repos from check cashing businesses too. And some of his smaller dealerships loaning to sketchy people would install GPS trackers. Consequently, he retired, but I stumbled into Eb’s videos today, and he appears to have GPS tracking on just about all his repossession targets. And he has a knack for grabbing the cars and people running out after him. The technology has gotten a lot cheaper and not all these vehicles he grabs are probably OEM GPS equiped with cellular data, so you’d have to suspect GPS trackers installed by the dealer. And you’d have to wonder what the company they contract with is doing with that data? Are they selling it? If you don’t hold the title on your vehicle and care about your privacy, you might want to check for a GPS device that has been installed.
In the below video he talks about one dealership that installs a GPS tracker with the ability to disable the vehicle remotely. I would guess dealerships writing their own loans who are not going to suffer delinquency or losses if you don’t make your payments. Consequently, I’m surprised by the fact he’s not threatened and the targets aren’t more aggressive, but then he usually has his wife with him filming and you’d have think the presence of the camera is affecting their behavior as well as knowing they have it coming.