Personalized license plates might seem like a harmless accessory, but they could make you a more likely target for criminals. Why? Because they communicate much more than the written message. “Personalized plates indicate that the person bearing them wants to be noticed,” says Phil Messina, a retired New York City police officer and founder of a self-defense school in Lindenhurst, N.Y. “The downside of doing things that tend to ‘get you noticed’ is that they can get you noticed by the wrong kind of people.”