Google street view is incredible, amazing for directions giving you vivid detail of streets. They have got themselves in a few problems recently though. One of the drawbacks of street view is if your car happens to be outside your house – it can be seen in all its glory – number plate and all. Google promises that:
We have developed cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology that is applied to all Street View images. This means that if one of our images contains an identifiable face (for example that of a passer-by on the sidewalk) or an identifiable license plate, our technology will automatically blur it out, meaning that the individual or the vehicle cannot be identified. If our detectors missed something, you can easily let us know.
The last sentence refers to the ‘report a problem’ link in the photo where you can ask them to blur a number plate, or even remove your car. Which is what I did several months, or even a year ago when I noticed my number plate clearly visible outside one of my further residences.
The only problem being Google did absolutely nothing about it. Number plate on my and a couple of other cars clearly visible, but blurred on some other cars in the street. Come on Google – get your act together!. I was told at the time they would sort it – foolishly I believed them and didn’t check back until this weekend. So now I’m waiting to see how long it takes them to respond this time… May be worth checking out your addresses.
the soapbox 