Go to Google Maps (Opens in a new tab) and enter your home addressĢ. Whatever the reason, it's relatively easy to request Google blur out the image of your home or apartment on Google Street View.ġ.

So maybe you're worried about an online stalker, maybe you don't want strangers peering in your windows, or maybe you value privacy for its own sake and simply don't think Google should have indexed and digitized photos of your home available for all to see.

In 2010, the company admitted (Opens in a new tab) that its Street View vehicles - the ones endlessly circling neighborhoods around the world - had secretly been collecting information from unencrypted WiFi networks they drove past for years (Opens in a new tab). Google has never exactly been a steward of anyones' privacy.

In 2008, the Minnesota suburb of North Oaks decided it didn't want pictures of it up on Google's service, and threatened to cite Google for trespassing. Captured by roving vehicles and individual photographers equipped with camera-laden backpacks, the service has been controversial from the start - both in the ways you might imagine, and ways you might not. The entire process is surprisingly easy.Īs the name would suggest, Street View, launched in 2007 (Opens in a new tab), provides a street-level view of many cities and towns around the world. Specifically, you can ask Google to permanently blur your house out - leaving only a smeared suggestion of a building in its place. Thankfully, there is something you can do about it. What that peek reveals may be more than you've bargained for - think views into bedroom windows, potential fodder for stalkers (Opens in a new tab), and more. That window just so happens to peek into your home, as well. Google Street View offers up a window to the world in all its bizarre, intimate, and often raw glory. Privacy Please is an ongoing series exploring the ways privacy is violated in the modern world, and what can be done about it.

Google map street view of my house