The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) is cracking down on who can look up your details using your car's licence plate.
The move was prompted by revelations in court that gangs had access to the register.
However, a Newshub investigation has since found there have been other serious breaches - and it's led to an overhaul of access rules which will take effect this month.
The kidnap and death of Jindarat Prutsiriporn was a case that exposed inner workings of the Head Hunters gang, in particular an incident in which the gang had an employee of Vehicle Testing New Zealand (VTNZ) look up a license plate number to access private details of a person who had reported the gang to police.
A High Court judge last month described a gang's access to details on the register as "disturbing".
The register used to be open to anyone but around six years ago, it became restricted to certain organisations such as VTNZ.
The idea was to protect people's personal details, but Newshub has learned it has not stopped abuse of the system.
"Some of the incidents are people just not knowing the right process to follow," says NZTA senior manager Robyn Elston.
"Others where people have deliberately gone outside the rules. It is a very serious offence."
The list of breaches the NZTA provided to Newshub includes two separate occasions where a person has searched for a licence plate, then posted the owner's name and address on an online forum.
In another instance, police stumbled upon screenshots of the motor vehicle register on a cellphone while investigating an unrelated matter.
The Privacy Commissioner John Edwards says he is surprised only seven breaches have been reported to the NZTA.
"I think that probably is low - we're probably not hearing about some being detected. It's not compulsory to report those to us at the moment," he says.
Of those that have, he says the key is finding out why the information was accessed.
"We don't know much about the context," he says. "It could be that there's corruption - somebody's bribed someone with legitimate access to target vehicles they want to steal or track down people with debts for harassment purposes, or things we don't know.
"So we don't know the full background there but it is troubling."
Those concerns led to further restrictions - previously petrol stations, car dealers or financial service providers could access to the register.
As of this month, only organisations that pass rigorous screening are allowed access.
"The fact that we had some incidents is not acceptable," Ms Elston says.
"That was part of the reason we have introduced a more rigorous approval and auditing process for people that need access."
More than 1900 companies have approval at the moment - and while the NZTA says it is hard to monitor what individuals do, the companies they work for will be held accountable for their staff.
Newshub.
