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I think the best answer is that it takes a very short time and it protects your privacy.
I also think most of the reasons given in this thread are pretty tenuous - but frankly it doesn't matter what I think is a legitimate concern or not, it matters only what the owner is concerned about.
Personally, I think risk of theft or reverse lookup is almost the same as when you park in a public parking lot.
If you have a black 135i and need to get fake plates, surely it's going to be a lot easier to unscrew some random car's plates, go driving around the city and find a black 135i, swap their plates with the ones you just stole and take & use the 135i plates; than it is to manufacture a second set of plates.
In Australia, everybody lists their cars for sale on carsales.com.au with photos and number plates so people can do a finance check before talking to the buyer. So, if you DID want to manufacture a second set of plates for a black 135i, it'd be dead easy to find five Australian examples of plates that you could use.
Perhaps it's different in the USA, and yes, I can understand why you don't want your plates coming up first when someone does a google search search for "black 135i".
What hasn't been said yet, and I always assumed the reason was - is mods. Most of us are running all sorts of other mods which may not be 100% street legal (catless downpipes anyone?). The last thing you want is a local cop who's low on his quota jumping on the car forums and taking down plates and mod lists to come pay you a random visit at home for a roadworthy check.
Also, obviously, if you've got a picture/video of you doing burnouts, or showing how your tune performs at 100mi/hr - it's pretty damn stupid to NOT blank your plates.
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