It’s also just dumb that imagery taken from a street isn’t doing anything privacy-invading or illegal yet they still feel the need to coddle paranoid NIMBYs. Street View can sometimes be useful for OSM, since you might’ve been there but forgotten to document something, are too far away, etc. Street View as a concept works to the public’s benefit, although Google owning it and it being proprietary isn’t good. I can see this removal feature being a good thing by probably one out of every thousand times it’s actually used, namely in the case that you have some kind of stalker (even then, though, satellite view 99% of the time would give you a concerning amount of info compared to Street View).
A scammer will use an image of your house for a rental ad. They will have a locksmith change the locks and rent the house out to an unsuspecting family. Then you have to evict them to get your house back.
You think someone in Nigeria is able to change the locks and evict someone from their home in another country? I’ll have some of whatever you’re smoking.
Let’s not forget anyone can fly light weight quadcopters and planes with cameras on them within the boundaries of private property. Most aviation authorities around the world are in control of air space, and that air space in most countries starts a micron above the ground. And therefore it’s perfectly legal for anyone to fly something within the boundaries of your property. Now you could get into trouble for being a peeping Tom, aggravation, etc depending on the circumstance. But nothing can be done if someone was to do a quick fly over.
In my opinion blurring out street view only protects you against the ‘script kiddies’ of the stalking/spying world.
One thing about blurring in street view. Once it’s done, it cannot be undone. So I’d have consideration for others before going ahead with making a request.
It’s also just dumb that imagery taken from a street isn’t doing anything privacy-invading or illegal yet they still feel the need to coddle paranoid NIMBYs. Street View can sometimes be useful for OSM, since you might’ve been there but forgotten to document something, are too far away, etc. Street View as a concept works to the public’s benefit, although Google owning it and it being proprietary isn’t good. I can see this removal feature being a good thing by probably one out of every thousand times it’s actually used, namely in the case that you have some kind of stalker (even then, though, satellite view 99% of the time would give you a concerning amount of info compared to Street View).
A scammer will use an image of your house for a rental ad. They will have a locksmith change the locks and rent the house out to an unsuspecting family. Then you have to evict them to get your house back.
So the scammer could save the trouble of taking their own photo?
A little difficult to take a photo from nigeria.
You think someone in Nigeria is able to change the locks and evict someone from their home in another country? I’ll have some of whatever you’re smoking.
You can call a local locksmith and tell them a story and they might go for it.
Yeah, I have a hard time seeing a way that one can really do a while lot to create privacy issues with Google Street View.
There just isn’t anything else to really combine the data with that exposes data that otherwise was private, or issues created by the scale.
Maybe if Google could one day use the database to identify a location from a photo, but then it’s not really the Street View service at issue.
Let’s not forget anyone can fly light weight quadcopters and planes with cameras on them within the boundaries of private property. Most aviation authorities around the world are in control of air space, and that air space in most countries starts a micron above the ground. And therefore it’s perfectly legal for anyone to fly something within the boundaries of your property. Now you could get into trouble for being a peeping Tom, aggravation, etc depending on the circumstance. But nothing can be done if someone was to do a quick fly over.
In my opinion blurring out street view only protects you against the ‘script kiddies’ of the stalking/spying world.
One thing about blurring in street view. Once it’s done, it cannot be undone. So I’d have consideration for others before going ahead with making a request.