"1I1LLI1"

See if you can remember that combination of characters -- I'll get back to that in a moment.

If you explore the various combinations of "1", "i" and "L" in online searches.  A lot of esoteric and interesting results come up.  It turns out that automated computer translations of digitally-scanned texts will garble text.  That's a bit interesting, though seemingly irrelevant to anything, right?

So why did I start a search on a mix of these characters?  Imagine if you wanted to try to anonymize yourself, such that, when license plate scanners and anyone else wanting to track you, suddenly were forced to manually review scans rather than automate it.

Think about it for a bit.

If you had to manually search through 3^7 combinations of characters it would take you some time, but because of the similarities of the characters, you would have to slow down and use care.

Now, imagine if that was instead, "I10OL01".  The pattern becomes even more complicated because now you're introducing another two confusing characters with "O" and "0".  We're talking 5^7 combinations -- 78,125 combinations.

Big Brother would have a heck of a time if people started selecting license plates using these combinations.  And what if a group of people started buying the same make, model and color vehicle?  5,000 black Crown Victorias with these odd combinations could make some people neurotically paranoid.

Will I start using this, myself?  No.  It's just something that crossed my mind these past few days.