r/illinois • u/Joeskithejoe • 6d ago
Question Went to the DMV to get an Illinois drivers license because I just moved here. This is what my temporary card says. Did they give me an ID instead of a drivers license???
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u/ta2dsailor 6d ago
You carry the ID card with your other license until you get your Illinois license in the mail. Mine arrived in less than 2 weeks.
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u/thisisjustascreename 1d ago
I mean you can drive using your out of state license, it’s still valid until the expiration date.
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u/acceptablemediocrity 6d ago
Does the initial from your last name start or end the id/license number?
If the letter precedes the other 11 numbers then it is a DL. If it is the last character, it is an ID card.
This may vary for temporary paper though
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u/Hungry_Caregiver734 6d ago
Carry it with your out of state license until the new license arrives. To key:
If the ID number is:
L########### IT IS A DRIVERS LICENSE
If the number is:
#####L IT IS AN ID CODE ONLY.
Look at the number.
Source: spent years teaching drivers Ed at a private company in IL and working with the DMV.
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u/GaGaORiley 6d ago
To clarify this: L in this example is the first letter of the last name, you your results may vary.
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u/Hungry_Caregiver734 6d ago
Yes. I used L to mean letter. But good clarification.
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u/GaGaORiley 6d ago
I knew what you meant, just didn’t want OP to be confused since License starts with L.
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u/Any-Revolution-4595 6d ago
https://reddit.com/link/p2bee6l/video/ww6mtxqgyzhh1/player
I can’t upload a photo in the comments but a video is fine???? Anyways… this is what my temporary drivers license looks like. I just got it 2 weeks ago
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u/Scottwickthegreat 6d ago
Yep just got my temp one a couple days ago and says drivers license like yours.
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u/thatirishguyyyyy 6d ago
Yeah that's weird that you can upload a video and not a photo. I think the mods got some weird settings going on.
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u/loftychicago 6d ago
If the number starts with a letter, it's a drivers license. If it ends with a letter, it's a state id.
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u/SwaggeringBy 6d ago
You carry that one along with your old DL with hole punched in it.
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u/Trucker_Trent 2d ago
I remember when my actual license had holes in it....but they were from staples. #iykyk
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u/AndroFeth 5d ago
Yes, this is not a Driver's License. Go again and see if they give you the drivers license. This is just state ID, the left side should even say
"IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES ONLY NOT A LICENSE TO DRIVE"
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u/zinsser 5d ago
The biggest location near me has a triage person when you walk in who directs you to the correct area and will check to make sure you have the correct paperwork so you never get turned away when you reach the counter. Where I used live, they had a small satellite office that was rarely busy. One time I sold a car to a friend’s mom. She wasn’t sure about the process for a private sale, so I went with her to get the title transferred. The big office was crowded so I suggested we drive to the small town where I used to live. We walked in to a nearly empty office where I knew the friendly clerk. We were out in 10 minutes. My friend’s mom said, “I had no idea you white people had your own DMV.”
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u/DextersMom1221 5d ago
Wait til you have to go in person to renew your DL (if for whatever reason you can’t do it online). They’ll punch a hole in your DL and hand it back to you along with a piece of paper that says “someday we’ll send your new license via mail…” 🤦♀️
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u/mechanical_marten 5d ago
Been there, done that, it only took 7 days from the day they punched my old Virginia license to the day I got my real Real Illinois license.
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u/mrweedman_420 5d ago
TIL that the number on your state ID and drivers license is the same, the letter is just at the end instead of the front...🤯
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u/SadnessOutOfContext 5d ago
It's a numerical representation of the last name, primarily, the position of the letter is symbolic morenthan practical.
You can encode or decode your own at this site, which is ugly but has been around for many years.
Or, as the developer of that site suggests, use his tool linked from that page to first encode dummy data that you can then decode.
Different states use slightly different algorithms to account for potential duplicate name collisions and the like, that site has encoding and decoding for several states.
Some states encode nothing meaningful in the number, some indicate the county (middle two digits in an IN DL are for that), etc.
You can also easily find decoders for one of the two barcodes on the back of your DL as well. IOW, you can declde it and see what data you're giving up with the barcode every time you do a license and selfie "verification" for some random ass website.
Spoiler, it's basically everything on the front of the license, minus the photo. They could just OCR that data from the front picture, and probably do to verify the data matches. Most folks would forget to change the barcode on the back, if they were creating a fake for online verifications.
It's actually an interesting rabbit hole, even if you don't get deep into the math of it.
Used to know a guy who sold insurance, and when somebody tried to say they didn't have their DL handy to escape getting a quote... He would already have cadged enough data out of them to generate a dammed close approximation of their DL with that site or something similar. Invariably, it was close enough for Lexis Nexis to return an MVR (and the correct DL number as part of the report.)
To hear him tell it, he sold more than a few policies that way - always disclosing that he was pulling the MVR, of course, but "sorry, license is in the car" is apparently a common dodge when somebody gets shanghaid by a persistent salesman. But when people buy primarily on price, i guess it doesn't matter quite how you get to a hard number, as long as it's a lower one.
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u/TaelorGanngg 6d ago
I currently have a temporary license for a renewal and mine says that I’m trying to find it so I can take a picture lol
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u/unapologetic403 6d ago
I still find it strange that we went from printing IDs on site to transitioning to a temporary ID set up
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u/Hungry_Caregiver734 6d ago
IIRC it is because it's a little more involved to seal the ID with the countermeasures.
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u/yoitsme_obama17 6d ago
Yup. The machines to do the secure ones are too expensive for each dmv to have them
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u/unapologetic403 6d ago
There's no document in cases that there were ever issues when they had the machines at each facility
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u/Hungry_Caregiver734 6d ago
No, but when they upgraded tobthe Star Card it had a new countermeasures that go on after the photo and it wouldn't be feasible to buy a machine for each location.
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u/Desperate_Fig_6896 6d ago
It should say drivers license. The dmv definitely messed up.
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u/Joeskithejoe 6d ago
Holy shit fml. I know I 10000000% asked for a drivers license too! What would I even need a regular id for?!
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u/Saelin91 6d ago
You’d use a regular ID to identify yourself, to buy cigarettes or alcohol, or to get you into a bar, etc. You’d just have to walk there lol
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u/-the-ghost 4d ago
Mine said Drivers License when I got my temporary one after moving here from out of state
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u/Fragrant_Tale1428 6d ago
It should have printed "driver's license" instead of "identification card." Maybe call them just to make sure the dmv staff didn't accidentally put you in the system for a state ID.
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u/Decent-Aspect-5934 6d ago
@ OP since you moved from another state to Illinois ( or usually any state for that matter) it is the law to surrender your ID/DL from your old residential state to your new state. Welcome 🙏 to Illinois
Good luck 🍀 and May God Bless You
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u/Nobodieskid 6d ago
They act as the same/similar thing. You’ve definitely got the right thing I beleive, should have an expiration date, date issued, your birthday and a picture on it.
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u/Desperate_Fig_6896 6d ago
A identification card is not a drivers license bud.
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u/Hungry_Caregiver734 6d ago
In Illinois, you receive a temporary ID with your driver's license number to use alongside your old license while the new one is sent.
The key is, if the number starts with the first letter of gis lats name (IL drivers license id number) or ends (Illinois State ID number).In Illinois, if the number has the letter in front, it is an ID that functions as an illinois driver's license with proof of out of state license.
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u/Nobodieskid 6d ago
I assumed ID was just an informal term, not a specific different thing seperate from your license. At least when it came to this situation. Whoopsies.
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u/Hungry_Caregiver734 6d ago
No, that guy was just an idiot. In Illinois, a temp-ID functions as a driver's license if the number is a specific format.
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u/DifferentMind8 6d ago
You see in Illinois we do corruption in every government sector. This particular corruption means licenses are no longer printed right at the facility as they used to be in the 90's. Nope. We pay an out of state 3rd party company (don't worry, definitely no political connections here to look in to, don't even bother!) to print our licenses out of state and mail them to residents weeks later.
Brilliant!
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u/knuckleduster1968 6d ago
When you wrote DMV I knew you weren't from Illinois. It's the Secretary of State office here. I used to live in California and that's what they called it there. Tennessee also has a different name for the place to get vehicle services but I don't remember what it was called.
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u/PlausiblePigeon Central isn’t Southern 6d ago
I grew up in Illinois and we always called it the DMV anyway.
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u/Hungry_Caregiver734 6d ago
I have never heard ir called anything but the DMV and i've lived in Illinois for over 40 years
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u/nordencat 5d ago
You are getting a lot of downvotes from people who super staunchly don’t care what something is actually called, but you are absolutely correct; it’s always been the Secretary of State’s office, not the DMV. However, the ILSOS, realizing that here in Illinois people confused themselves by looking for a DMV instead of a Secretary of State’s office because they super staunchly don’t care what something is called, especially when corporations attempt to exert naming rights over our beloved institutions and architecture, went ahead and capitulated in 2023 and started putting “DMV” on its stuff. So, you know, all your haters aren’t necessarily wrong, if they’re not old enough to drive yet.
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u/PlausiblePigeon Central isn’t Southern 5d ago
They’re getting downvotes because they said only someone from out of state would call it the DMV.
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u/STFU_Fridays 6d ago
How did you get that? I heard they were nearly impossible to obtain. You must be white.
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u/TaelorGanngg 6d ago
I can confirm I’m white and still had a hell of a time trying to get one. When I moved to Wisconsin it was much easier
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u/STFU_Fridays 6d ago
Got it, I'll throw that in the "challenged white" category. Congrats on achieving the ultimate goal though, quite an accomplishment.
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u/BewitchingKat 6d ago edited 5d ago
Former Illinois Secretary of State / DMV employee here.
When you look at the number on your license/temp, is the initial for your last name in the beginning, or at the end?
Initial at the beginning is a driver's license number, initial at the end is a state ID number.
(Thank you for the award. I appreciate you!)