Many people around the world feel privacy is a major concern nowadays. And rightly so. There are numerous websites that deal in your personal information. For the right amount of money, your personal life is up for grabs. Why give it to them for free when you don’t have to? Say, for example, if you want to blur your house on Google Maps.
Google Maps shows photos of addresses including homes and businesses. This is old news, but Google sends around cars on public streets to take “street view” photos. These are then added to its interactive mapping system. There is nothing illegal about this since you can’t expect any degree of privacy in your front yard. However, you may feel otherwise.
Is Your House on Google Maps?
Going off-grid is in this situation is fairly simple. If want to find out whether your home is on Google Maps, simply go to Google Maps and type in your address. When the map appears you might see a small orange stick figure on the left side of the screen. Drag that stick figure to your street and your house – and others – will appear.
(Note: If the street is not highlighted in blue on the map, then your house and street have not been photographed).
Google has provided a way to keep your house off of Google Maps if you feel it is an invasion of your privacy.
Blur Your House on Google Maps
- Go to Google Maps and type in your address.
- Bring up the street view of your property.
- Look to the bottom right hand corner of the screen you should see an icon labeled: “Report a problem.”
- Click on “Report a problem.”
- A page called “Report Inappropriate Street View” should then display.
- There will be a box called “Image Preview” where you can adjust the area you would like blurred.
- Below the Image Preview, there is a section called “Why Are You Reporting This Image?”
- If you want your house blurred, click on “My home.”
- A text box will appear where you should add verifying information, such as your address and a description of your house.
- You need to include your email address in the box below that.
- They use a reCAPTCHA verification service, so click the “I’m not a robot” box and hit “Submit”
- Check back in a few days to see if the image has been blurred.
Note that this process is permanent, so make sure all of the information is correct before submitting it.
You can also get license plates and faces blurred. For example, if you want a picture of your business on Google Maps, but don’t want the license plate number of your vehicle parked in front on Google, you can get that blurred. You can also get your car blurred out as well if you want.
