Last updated: September 2026
The short version
We never store which VINs you check, and we never connect a VIN to a person. Structural validation runs entirely in your browser.
VIN handling
The check digit, model year and manufacturer decoding happen on your device. When you request a full decode, the VIN is sent once to the official US government database (NHTSA vPIC) and the result is cached by vehicle so future lookups of the same VIN need no upstream call. We keep no record linking any lookup to any visitor: responses carry no-store headers and request inputs are not written to logs. A VIN by itself identifies a vehicle's build, not a person, and we never combine it with owner information.
Coverage improvement
When a decode returns no data (for example a brand-new model our sources have not caught up with), we record only the non-identifying build-spec characters: the three-character manufacturer code, the model-year character and the five-character vehicle descriptor. Thousands of identical vehicles share those characters; the serial number - the part that singles out one vehicle - is never written anywhere. This tells us which models or manufacturers our data is missing, nothing about you or your car.
Rate limiting
Standard web-server logs record IP addresses and request timing for rate limiting and abuse prevention, retained briefly and rotated automatically.
Analytics and cookies
We use Google Analytics for aggregate traffic statistics (pages, country, device). No account system, no marketing cookies, no data sales. The theme preference is stored in your browser's localStorage and never transmitted.
Contact
Questions or corrections: [email protected]. VinDecoderCheck.com is operated by IPNOVA SYSTEMS LTD, Cyprus.