Remove Your House From The Internet
You may not see the harm in having images of your house out on the internet, but the thing about privacy is that by the time you feel like you really need it, it may be too late.
Services like Google Maps and Google Street View are incredibly convenient for legitimate purposes like checking out a neighborhood you’re thinking of moving to. Unfortunately, they are just as convenient for facilitating the activities of stalkers, burglars, and other criminals.
Why you might not want to remove your information
One thing to consider before you start requesting various information services to remove your data is that in order to remove your information they often require that you give them more personal identifiable information (PII). At the minimum this will likely be an email address. This is a problem because it is highly likely that at some point in the future these sites will have their own data leaks.
For this reason, you might want to create a throwaway email address to be used exclusively for data removal purposes. Since the goal is to have as little information as possible about yourself, it is a good practice to make a generic email address like booklover4477. As of this writing Outlook.com and Protonmail.com are the recommended email services as they do not require phone verification (which only links more of your personal info to the accounts and, by extension, your home address).
Get Your House Off Google
This article will focus on the elephant in the room: Google Street View. Thankfully the process is fairly straightforward.
- Search for your address on Google. This will pull up a search results website with a map view at the very top. Click the map to open it in Google Maps.
- Click the street view image in the top left of the screen to go into Street View mode.
- In the transparent grey box that is overlaid on the street view image, click the three dot icon, then “Report a Problem” (see image below)
- On the next page you will see a picture with a red box. Drag the red box to cover the area that you would like to have blurred.
- Select “My home,” enter your email address, check the captcha box, and then click “submit.”
Where to go from here
Google Street View is not the only place where information on your home address is available to the general public online. Real estate websites, Zillow and RedFin in particular, also share your information. In some cases these websites may even expose historical images of the interior of your house, backyard, outbuildings, etc.
It is recommended that you create accounts (using your newly created email address and a pseudonym) on these websites and “claim” your home. This will then allow you to edit the information on your home, including removing the photos that are publicly available.
In Conclusion: Safety In Numbers!
If you are being targeted for stalking or harassment, and the person knows that you do not want to be found, then your home being the ONLY blurred residence on Google Street View may itself verify to a stalker or other criminal that the house is yours.
For this reason, encouraging neighbors to go through the same procedure will help to make your neighborhood a more private place in general. Sharing this information with neighbors is a great first step.
You might also consider sharing this blog post on social media, any neighborhood-specific apps that you use, or even buying a bunch of stamps and sending some anonymous letters in the mail sharing information on how to do it.
