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VIN decoding website Compnine is back up and running again

CoveredAV

Full Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2006
Messages
251
I first heard about Compnine from a number of posts (perhaps Sperry's?, may he R.I.P) in various child boards on the CAFCNA forums, and since the Sperry Tech Center is read only, I wasn't sure where the best catagory would be to let everyone know that this vin decoding website is apparantly back up and running now.

Compnine

It looks a little different from before it shut down, in that they charge various fees depending on usage.  It looks like $5.00 a month is the cheapest... and that's for 50 VINs a month!  Seems like the one week free trial is probably good enough for most of us checking on own vehicle.  They say their service fees are really directed toward businesses, like insurance companies, used car dealers, salvage yards, etc that need to know what options and equipment is really supposed to be in a particular VIN.  Now that makes sense.  I had always wondered when Compnine was online before how they paid for and justified the bandwidth.  At least there is an online resource again, instead of bugging GM technicians who post on forums. 

I found the last post on CAFCNA that gives a rough time stamp when Compnine had last shut down:

  02/24/10 03:50 PM
Give this a try, their beta VIN decoder listed not only the usual build information but the entire list of installed RPO codes and what each one was. Says it works from 1980-2010

http://www.compnine.com/

dead link looks like they went under


Well, looks like they are back up again.  By charging fees to insurance companies and auto dealers, hopefully they'll stay up and running.

 
1.  Why would I pay for a VIN decode when I can do it myself with a 5 minute trip to my dealer?

2. They don't decode any VIN after 2008 so pretty useless IMO.
 
Not for me, they don't even tell ya who is the owner. (n)
 
I guess you could always go to  www.whois.com
Not even registered I'm thinking something in china
 
Only up to 2008?  Compnine's title page says they cover model years up to 2010?  I haven't personally tried it on that late of model year though.

Besides not all of us can afford the new new body style!  There are tens of thousands of Avy's from 2002-2006 that are still in service, and still being bought, sold, and owned by members and potential members here.  I know I'll be driving my 2005 until the wheels fall off, and then, I'll just get new wheels and hubs, and keep driving it.

The info Compnine has (or at least the vast amount of info the original Compnine provided) was very useful.  The dealership report on a specfic VIN provides RPOs, recalls, and service history on that VIN only.  What Compnine provided was the statistics on all similarly built vehicles.  Ever since I learned that Compnine had closed, I had been kicking myself for not printing out all the incredibly detailed and uniquely interesting (to a car collector especially) related statistics on attributes to a model.

I haven't tried the new Compnine yet.  It never occured to me to look the domain name up on whois.  I never looked them up 5 years ago either, when I followed a link posted here (on one of Sperry's threads) and found the site resource.  And 5 years ago, it was just as easy and just as free to look up VIN's at a dealership, but that still didn't provide the tangental information that Compnine did. 

When Compnine shut down, I had assumed that GM had forced them to, due to some sort of trade secret violations or whatever.  Thats how much additional information they had (about 2001-2006 GMT800's at least).  But, again, the reasons for closure was just my assumption... nothing factual to base it on.  Not trying to start a baseless rumor here, just sharing what I had thought at the time.  Anyhow, I was really surprised to find the site back up.  I found out when a member on another GM forum mentioned it, and was excited to hear about it.  I'm just passing along a heads up to the forum (CAFCNA) where I first learned about this information resource.

Speaking of starting rumors, if Compnine was in China, then that would make them actually closer to General Motors, given that it has been indisputably established that for the last 10 years, the bulk of GM's investments in automotive manufacturing and sales have been in China.
 
MS03 2500 said:
I guess you could always go to  www.whois.com
Not even registered I'm thinking something in china

the proper Whois is www.whois.net, and if they are registered by a specific Domain Registrar it will tell you, in this case Compnine is registered by godaddy, you have to use who.godaddy.com:

value returned:

Registrant:
Domains By Proxy, LLC

DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: COMPNINE.COM
Created on: 09-Dec-06
Expires on: 09-Dec-16
Last Updated on: 26-Sep-11

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration COMPNINE.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains By Proxy, LLC
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Technical Contact:
Private, Registration COMPNINE.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains By Proxy, LLC
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Domain servers in listed order:
NS33.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS34.DOMAINCONTROL.COM




based on that information they are using a US based proxy, so yeah they could be almost anywhere, running thru a proxy usually means the host is hiding behind a US registrar for spamming purposes, in this case it might be to avoid copyright infringement..
 
Hey guys, it was working for me, then stopped working. I just realized all of a sudden the activation email was going to Spam in my Gmail.

And here is a tip. Gmail ignores dashes and hyphens in email addresses, so you can use them to your advantage with compnine.
For example, if your email address is obamasucks@gmail.com you can use obama_sucks@gmail.com or obama.sucks@gmail.com or o.b.ama_sucks@gmail.com essentially giving you an unlimited amount of email addresses to use.
 
old-chevy-dude said:
the proper Whois is www.whois.net, and if they are registered by a specific Domain Registrar it will tell you, in this case Compnine is registered by godaddy, you have to use who.godaddy.com:
value returned:
[...]
based on that information they are using a US based proxy, so yeah they could be almost anywhere, running thru a proxy usually means the host is hiding behind a US registrar for spamming purposes, in this case it might be to avoid copyright infringement..

We call it "anonymizer" and it's different from a proxy server in that it's not an actual proxy machine but just a service with that name. It's used to hide your contact info on the net, for a fee. And indeed, it's most likely associated with less than legit business procedures. I wouldn't say "copyright infringement" but rather attempting to stay untraceable and avoid legal consequences for potential money misuse (they ask for a credit card, don't they?) (Source: I used to run a web design business and set up numerous domains for my customers.)

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive VIN explanation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Identification_Number - for those who care about what the letters and numbers actually mean. CarFax and CarProof (in Canada) have comprehensive information about your vehicle but even that won't yield names and addresses (or at least shouldn't.) Rumor has it that even so the information on CP and CF is not 100% accurate and sometimes even their databases are not updated properly or at all.

Back to Compn*ne - it looks shady to me. I wouldn't give them my credit card. My 0.02$ (phased out in Canada as we're not using the penny anymore.)
 
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