You should know that you can request your home be blurred from Google Street View.
[If] you prefer your home, vehicle or full body not be shown, you can request it to be blurred. Only the home owner or tenant is eligible to request a house blur.
the blur is permanent. We also ensure that the newly blurred Street View image is excluded from generative AI prompting from that point onward, honouring your privacy choice.
I really don’t understand why anyone wants this. Your street can be accessed by anyone at anytime to view it the way Google Maps does it.
All this does is ruin the experience when people try to see what the neighborhood looks like when checking out houses in the area, especially since this is permanent and can never be undone, even by future owners.
Edit: I’m genuinely curious why others do it and open to changing my mind on it. I just don’t see any real reasons why this is something more people should be doing.
I probably should have posted this to a degoogle forum instead. For me, it’s a bit of an F.U. to Google for capitulating to a corrupt US government by changing the names of various bodies of water. In my head, if everyone does this, maybe it’ll be enough to move people to some other mapping software.
How about instead we track all the billionaires houses and locations?
It’s a data collection honeypot.
Google requires you to upload your proof of residence to blur the image, thus attaching your name to the property. As other commentators have pointed out, it does nothing to really hide your home from the internet, while providing yet another piece of personal information to Google.
And your proof of residence is much more valuable to data merchants than a picture of the front of your house.
I can’t figure this out. They say that you can redact your name and financial stuff. The only thing they’d know is your house, (throw away) email and gas provider. What am I missing?
Do not do this as it will draw attention
This is the actual Streisand effect in action.
I used to have a tiny amount of fun coming across a blurred house on Google Maps, then jumping over to Bing to see it unblurred. They were always just regular old houses. But then Microsoft shut down the Bing street view.
What I’m saying is that Google Maps isn’t the only source of street imagery. In the US, your city’s property record system is probably available online, and probably has a photo. And also the footprint of your house, and the value, and the sale records, and what type of heating system you use, and…
It’s about as much privacy as shutting the blinds. Maybe less. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing. I was hoping others would share links to the other street view services’ blur request form.
