Have I Been Flocked? What the plate lookup shows

What haveibeenflocked.com is

Have I Been Flocked lives at haveibeenflocked.com. Its main feature is a plate lookup on the home page: you enter a plate, and the site checks it against the Flock search records it has collected. It also publishes reports on search reasons, agencies and immigration-related searches.

The site says it is not affiliated with Flock Safety or any government agency. Its funding page describes it as one developer's project, fiscally sponsored by the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Its companion news site, Footnote4a, describes itself as the reporting side of the project.

FlockDetour is a separate project with no connection to haveibeenflocked.com. We map camera locations and plan routes, and we never search or store license plates.

Have I Been Flocked · Have I Been Flocked: About · Footnote4a

Where the data comes from

Flock keeps audit logs of the searches its customers run. Some agencies release those logs when someone files a public records request, and some post redacted versions on Flock transparency portals. Have I Been Flocked collects released logs and loads them into a database you can search.

On October 4, 2026, its home page said the database held 243,098,172 Flock searches involving 4,686,527 plates. A banner the same day said the latest import was still processing, so those counts change. The site says logs can reach it months or years after the searches happened. In its words: “This is not a real-time monitoring tool.”

Not every log contains plates, so the type of log matters. A plate lookup can only match rows where the plate was released. By the site's own description, searches that appear only in network logs or portal summaries cannot match.

Scroll horizontally to compare all columns.

Have I Been Flocked: audit log types · What a Flock network audit does and doesn't prove

What a match means

A match means someone with Flock access typed that plate into a search, and the agency's log of it ended up in the site's database. The result shows what was entered, usually with a date, a stated reason and the user who searched. Flock logs often shorten names, and the site tries to fill them in from public police rosters.

The site says a match does not mean you were stopped or investigated, and that the searcher was not necessarily a police officer. It also does not show where your car was photographed. The site states that results do not show when or whether your vehicle passed a Flock camera, or what the search returned.

If a search looks wrong to you, the site suggests filing a public records request with the agency that ran it. If you think you were improperly watched, it recommends talking to a lawyer.

What no match means

No match is not evidence that your plate was never searched. The site calls its own dataset incomplete: few governments make the logs easy to get, and the records it does obtain are often redacted.

Some gaps are built into the logs. Searches by other agencies through sharing appear with the plate blanked out. A search by vehicle description leaves no plate to match. A search made last month may not reach the site for a long time.

Before you type a plate into any website

Entering your plate on any website gives that site your plate, so read its privacy policy first. Have I Been Flocked's policy says it does not save or log the plates or terms you search. It says it keeps 24 hours of application logs with hashed or partial IP addresses, and stores a raw IP address and email only when someone uploads records. We have not audited the site and can only report what its policy says.

If you would rather not use a third-party lookup, you can request the logs from the agency yourself, as described below. That route also covers agencies whose logs the site does not have.

If the site shows sensitive information about you, its FAQ points to a privacy page that explains how to ask for a redaction.

Have I Been Flocked: privacy policy · Have I Been Flocked: FAQ

How to get your agency's audit logs

Start with the police department or sheriff that runs the cameras near you. Check whether its Flock transparency portal already posts a search audit. Then file a public records request for its organization and network audit logs for a set date range, in CSV or spreadsheet form.

Have I Been Flocked's audit log page suggests also asking for the agency's network sharing list and event logs, which show who the agency shares with and when settings changed. The page quotes Flock's own guide to open records laws, which says customers can download audit logs from the Insights tab in 31-day blocks. That detail helps if an agency says it cannot find its logs.

Our step-by-step guide has request wording that has worked, and our network audit guide explains how to read the files that come back.

How to request your city's Flock audit logs · What is a Flock network audit? · Find your agency's transparency portal · News: how to check if your plate has been searched

Related guides

How to request your city's Flock audit logs · What is a Flock network audit, and what does a row prove? · Can other agencies search your city's Flock camera data? · Why are Flock cameras controversial? · FlockDetour vs DeFlock: choose by what you need to do · All guides · Live camera map · Get the app