Unfortunately, people steal license plates. Sometimes it's in an effort to acquire the registration sticker, other times it's because it's a desirable personalized plate. In Arizona, if someone steals your license plate, you're required to get a new one, *with new numbers/letters*—meaning, you no longer "own" your personalized letters/numbers. That sucks. I haven't been the victim of license plate theft yet, but since I have a desirable personalized plate, I added some special screws that require a nonstandard bit to loosen (eg, not a phillips or flathead). It's not entirely theft-proof, but it certainly makes my license plate much more difficult to steal that the one on the car next to mine. ![[spanner screws.jpeg]] I simply unscrewed the standard license plate screws from my vehicle, walked into a Harbor Freight store, and asked for the same size in a nonstandard screw head style. I paid a buck or two for a couple tool bits and a half dozen screws. The one I have is called a spanner screw, but there are a number of [other options](https://resources.tannerbolt.com/articles/what-type-of-screw-is-this). You can also make it harder to steal your registration sticker by adhering it, then using a razor blade to cut a grid in it, making it too difficult to take off and reapply on someone else's plate. Having a license plate holder will also prevent someone from sniping the entire sticker corner off of the plate, which is a common tactic too. --- Tags: >[!info] About my product reviews >Online reviews are untrustworthy and suck these days, so I post my own to share my experience and research (see #product-reviews). [Contact me](https://rscottjones.com/contact) if you have any questions or to let me know if this was useful for you. Sometimes I'll include an affiliate link (that costs you nothing to use) so you can help support site costs, but as with all of my public notes, my goal here isn't to make money.