Yes, but if visitors turn up, they will think they have the wrong address because the actual house will not be blurry.
Germans are very conscious of privacy and data protection for historical reasons and many Germans have had their houses blurred. When a lot of people do it the Streissand effect dilutes to homeopathic levels. I do not think that it is a smart or useful move (anymore) nor would I do it myself (I live in a flat in a bigger building anyway), but I can understand it. It was much more common when Google Maps was a novelty, today most have given up.
But don’t get me started about Facebook! Any spanner in their works I not only understand but support wholeheartedly!
I really don’t understand what evil deeds people think they’d open themselves up to if their house is on Google Maps. “Oh, no! Strangers will see that we can afford a mailbox and a screen door!”
If I’m that irrationally worried about privacy, then I’m going to post a sign on our sidewalk:
“You’re welcome to walk on this sidewalk,
but as you do so, please do NOT look at our house.
Thank you.”
Then I’ll count the people who can’t help but look.
So I wouldn’t care, unless the Google Camera Car caught me peeing in my front yard.
(which they didn’t. I closed my robe and was politely waving at the car by the time it was at our house)
I can think of lits of potential reasons:
- Your house has a zoning violation, and you don’t want officials to be able to easily see it if they go street view fishing.
- Your car is parked in the driveway with license plate visible.
- You don’t want to help thieves who might canvas Google Street View for houses without alarm signs, or with certain types of windows that are easily defeated, or for signs of wealth.
- the house was in a state of disrepair and you don’t want that in the public record.
There could be a thousand other reasons unique to an individual’s circumstances.
When I bought my house, it came with some window air conditioner units and some pieces of wood with loose brackets but it wasn’t clear which unit & wood chunk went with which windows. Streetview was very useful in estsblishing how the previous owner can installed the A/Cs and saved me a lot of back-breaking and finger-pinching trial and error.
I get most of these, and the thousand other possible reasons. But what is the harm in having someone see your license plate?
Well, it could be your lover’s car, and you’d rather your wife or her husband doesn’t know it.
More generally, you might not want someone who has a stolen database keyed to license plates being able to connect that data with street view. For example, if someone has location data, they could then know which homes currently have their occupants on vacation.
As a general rule, privacy in the modern age means trying to limit your data footprint as much as possible. This shit is being archived. Are you sure you trust the AI and database tech of the future to not use that data for nefarious purposes? For example, a fast image search of Google data might be able to find your car by license plate, and then locate it using street view data.
Do you trust the police to not go on fishing expeditions with that data? Or a malicious entity like a scammer who now has more personal information about you they can use to steal your identity? Knowing your address, type of house, plate number and make and model of car you drive might give someone enough personal info about you to to impersonate you and gain access to other data or finances.
For various reasons, apparently Google now blurs license plates in street view.
Bumped. And this thread has strayed farther from FQ and closer to MPSIMS or IMHO.
Google accepts requests from tenants, so the tenant can apparently do it even if the owner does not want it done. That is questionable.
And now they run into the Streisand Effect.
Eta: didn’t realize this was a bump, sorry.
If you notice a blurred house you can often get a look at it by going back to an earlier view using the timeline. You can also just move forward and back a little at a time and sometimes they pop into view.
Anyone with access to the license plate database (such as the police) could get information about you by looking up your plate. Of course people could do that without Google Maps but Google is just covering themselves.
It’s right beside the white-out.
A funny location is 19 Cleveland Pl. in Manhattan NYC.
If you are directly in front of it, it is blurred out. If you go one click forward or back, it isn’t. I have no idea why it is blurred. What I would have expected, the sidewalk greenhouse(?) in front where there might have been people, is not blurred.