
How to blur your house on Google Street View - elorant
https://mashable.com/article/how-to-blur-your-house-on-google-street-view/
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tonywebster
My house was blurred many years ago and I wish it wasn't. It almost draws more
attention when you look at Street View, which is probably contrary to privacy
interests. I've also had odd reactions from companies I've called out to do
maintenance or yard work. Some of them never show up, and I suspect it is at
least in part because they draw some negative inference from the blurred
house. I'm also thinking about selling the house soon, and I just know it's
going to be problematic. I've tried to get it unblurred several times, but
have failed to get a response from Google.

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DINKDINK
>My house was blurred [...] It almost draws more attention [...], which is
probably contrary to privacy interests.

You're commenting on privacy when you're addressing covertness.

Privacy/Secrecy qualities addresses observability.

Secrecy: information desired to never be known (eg Location of your savings)

Privacy: information desired to be selectively known (eg a medical issue)

Covertness: information desired to be unsurprising (eg the thickness of your
wallet being a side channel to your wealth)

Covertness is context dependent and in some contexts, a highly covert entity
can actually be less private than a highly private entity. Walking around town
in a ScrambleSuit will make you more private but less covert. Getting the same
haircut, clothes, gate of people in your town will make you more covert but
less private.

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jasonvorhe
Wow, this resurfaces memories when conservative boulevard publications and
parties in Germany turned people to fight Google Streetview in 2009 for
"privacy reasons" and everyone fell for it and blurred their house. Today,
everyone I know who blurred their house hates on Streetview pictures being
close to useless because they haven't been updated since 2009.

Google just didn't update them after the mess they had to handle in Germany.
And why would they.

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aflag
Interesting, I don't think I'd mind not having the street view feature. The
only reason I use it is to see how foreign countries look like. What are
people using it for?

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chiph
When I was buying my house, I used it to check out a neighborhood as a first-
cut filter, prior to spending the time & gas to go drive around in person.

If I'm driving somewhere new, I'll use it to identify landmarks for turns.
While I'll often have the spoken map directions going on my phone, if the
intersection is complex, streetview can help me get into the correct turn
lane.

I wanted to use it for Germany prior to a trip a couple of years ago, but it
looks like very little of the country has coverage, which is annoying. But
it's their country and if they don't want camera cars photographing everything
I can understand that.[0]

[0] I had a neighbor get divorced because of streetview. Back when it was new,
the first thing everyone did was look up their home. Well, my neighbor saw a
custom motorcycle parked out front that was not his.

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luckylion
I don't think it's privacy concerns that lead to Germany not being covered
very well, Google just didn't see the benefit of going far beyond the large
cities. I live in the suburbs and our sleepy little town has no streetview-
coverage at all.

I wonder whether you can use the percentage of blurred houses as a signal for
evaluating a neighborhood.

~~~
buran77
It was for privacy reasons, which is why so many houses are also blurred. Once
a house is blurred there's no way to unblur it since Google doesn't take new
pictures and as far as I know the blur would still stay at that spot.

Look at every country around Germany and you'll see a web of streets covered
by Street View. In Germany it's one big blank [0] and what's covered uses
decade old pictures taken before Google stopped mapping Germany on Street
View.

[0] [https://imgur.com/09Glxyo](https://imgur.com/09Glxyo)

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iddqd
I saw a Street View car driving around in Berlin very recently, maybe they
have started again?

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lrem
When you look at that map, you'll see the main cities being covered, but only
them. Even rural Romania is mostly covered, while Germany is almost as blank
as Bosnia.

~~~
buran77
Berlin at least still doesn't appear to have any significant added coverage
over the past decade. Yes, there are pictures uploaded by users. But the
Street View picture seem to be old. In Germany looking at taxis is a good way
of telling the age of a picture. All the Street View pictures I clicked on
have pre-2010 models. I'd thank they would update the touristic areas or city
center first but they seem just as old.

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pmontra
Thread about unblurring

[https://support.google.com/maps/thread/5010142?hl=en](https://support.google.com/maps/thread/5010142?hl=en)

Apparently anybody can request to blur any house and probably the blurring
can't be reversed by the new owners of a house.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I wonder how successfully someone could abuse this to blur large swaths of
Street View. It'd obviously require some effort to ensure Google didn't know
all the requests came from one actor or group.

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xxpor
Sounds like a case of a sticky wheel gets the grease. If it became such an
issue it threatened the viability of street view, they'd quickly come up with
a policy to deal with it. As is its not worth the time to create or administer
the ongoing ops such a policy would require.

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cortesoft
Sure, but it could become a big problem for one street or neighborhood without
becoming a big enough problem for google to care.

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ghaff
>without becoming a big enough problem for google to care

Well, that's the point. Google doesn't care if it's a big problem for a
person, a street, or a neighborhood so long as it's not a problem for them.

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ablation
I wonder if this might have an unintended Streisand Effect outcome e.g. people
seeking out blurred locations in person to find what "they" don't want you to
see (regardless of the fact that the "they" is just someone who cares about
their privacy)?

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Lammy
I’ve never actually run across a “blurred” single home and wouldn’t really
have the urge to look more into one if I did, but I have seen several cases
where entire nearby streets are unavailable on Street View. I’ve gone after a
small handful of those out of curiosity :)

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cdubzzz
Oddly enough, I happened to come across the first blurred home I have ever
seen today when randomly picking a house to get a Sarasota, FL zip code —
[https://goo.gl/maps/eogUZfNsLBMEqWEK8](https://goo.gl/maps/eogUZfNsLBMEqWEK8)

~~~
Fogest
It's funny because you can just zoom out and see the house from satellite view
in 3d and see almost the same amount you'd see from street view.

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drusepth
The fact that this is permanent seems like it won't scale well over time as
people who would blur their house move from house to house.

What am I supposed to do if I move into a house that someone else has blurred?

~~~
jaimex2
Not much you can do.

I certainly wouldn't buy a house thats been blured.

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the_arun
We blurred the house while we were remodelling. I didn’t know we could do it
permanenty. Also, we need to ask to do it from street/satellite views as well

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hosteur
How to remove from satelite view?

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TeMPOraL
Get it classified as a military installation.

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Scoundreller
I remember looking up some French prisons and they were blurred out. So I went
over to Yandex and got an unfiltered look.

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crazygringo
I'm curious -- does this blur it just in the current batch of Street View
photos, or for future ones too?

(Cars/faces would seem to be only for current, but blurring a house seems like
it could be automatically re-applied eternally.)

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aflag
What happens if you rent the house? If someone moves in will they not be able
to unblur it?

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ghaff
Apparently not. And Google also apparently actually deletes the imagery,
possibly to be compliant with European privacy directives.

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jonwachob91
The article states that you have to give Google a reason, and google can
request more information before bluring the house. So what would a good block
of text be to request that they blur my house just b/c I don't want google to
be showing my house?

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jenoer
The request for more information will likely only be to confirm you are owner
of the property / residing there. As for the request, I simply stated "I want
my house blurred for privacy reasons.". No questions were asked and the
request was processed within a week.

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tyingq
I wonder what they do to verify that it's your house to blur. Maybe a
"somewhat aged" Google account plus submitting it while in/near the house?

Not that it's a huge deal, but it does sound like it's not reversable.

~~~
encom
Requiring people to create a Google account to request Google stop spying on
them is just insulting.

I just checked the neighbourhood I grew up in, and the Google surveillance van
snapped fresh pictures last summer. Because the homes are so close to the
street, you can literally see into peoples living rooms. Disgusting.

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znpy
A good reason to blur your property is to protect yourself from lazy public
officers.

I've read stories about tax officers copying pictures of countryside location
where some kind of spot had emerged, and use then to claim that a house
without permit was built and advance IRS-like requests for taxation under the
threats of legal action. No actual in person visit to the location was done,
of course.

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jaimex2
Whats the "why you should" part?

Seems like a great way to make life harder for yourself for no reason.

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mxuribe
This feels like years ago when clever spam emails would ask you to
unsubscribe, which really only sent them a confirmation signal that your email
address was valid, and the human behind it was responsive (to a degree). If i
go and blur my home, does that now send an additional signal to google for the
shadow (or maybe not-so-shadow) dossier that they keep on me (and billions of
others)?? I'll admit that clearly this speaks more to my lack of trust of orgs
like Google. Then again, i wonder if i submit requests to blur many/all of the
homes in my neighborhood - as a very mild randomizer effect - if google would
honor all my requests? Or, if they would use other signals to try and zone in
on my true location (using, say gps/location from my phone, etc.), and only
allow blurring of my home?

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Tagbert
> Operation initiated

> Dossier update in-progress

> Operation complete

>|

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leptoniscool
How would this work for a condo or apartment type property? If just one of the
unit wants blur, does the whole building get blurred? Also, what happens if
that person moves?

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jenoer
You have to draw a rectangle on the area you want blurred. I for example, only
blurred my windows.

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nine_k
It's sort of hard to me to imagine why one would like to edit out public and
trivially available information about oneself. It only draws attention, and
not in a positive way, like a hopeless attempt to conceal something obvious.

I can see the point when one's house is already behind a tall wall, invisible
for passers-by, and it gets revealed on the Google maps 3D view. Blurring it
out makes sense then.

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verroq
So you have to tell Google what your address is?

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cdubzzz
If you have a Google account, I’d assume your address is already known. The
form only asks for clarifying details and an email address.

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verroq
How did they know my address from having a Google account?

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hoytschermerhrn
So many different options: Shipping confirmation emails, IP addresses of
connected accounts, GPS of frequent locations (i.e at nights when you're
presumably sleeping), phone number for 2FA that can easily be reverse-lookup'd
to PII databases, etc. etc.

