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Google might have taken a beating from the EIA this morning, but it's about to take another. Residents of one street in Carshalton, in Surrey, UK, have described the search giant as arrogant, after it had another streetview car drive the road outside their properties, summarily unblurring the images of the houses that the owners had requested be censored.
Back in 2009, several of the home owners on the street requested that their houses be blurred, as they were worried the Streetview images would be used by burglars. Google complied, but a few years later, another streetview car snapped newer images of the area and these overwrote the originals.
“I think it’s plain wrong,” said one resident. “We had a leaflet from the police a few days ago saying there had been 13 burglaries in the area and people are worried about security.”
He was forced to reapply for the image of his house and an elderly neighbour to be censored. According to The Telegraph, he also repeatedly asked Google why it had updated the images that were previously censored. No response has yet been received.
“It’s the sheer arrogance of not responding,” he said. “I can’t believe an organisation like that can’t answer some simple questions.”
Visiting the road on streetview now, shows several blurred abodes, so it seems Google has made good on the resident's request, despite the difficulties that he faced.
Kitguru Says: Sounds like just a mix up, but you'd think Google would have something in place to prevent once censored locations being updated without some sort of check.
Little Englander Morons. I doubt burglars use Streetview, but if they do I’d bet they look for the blurred houses, knowing that’s where the good stuff is
I have heard burglars use Streetview, but I think it is just to save them getting up and going out in person. If Streetview did not exist they would have to go in person to ‘case’ property for future burglary. As someone else said, blurring probably marks theses houses as having something to protect therefore making them a target.
I think Google should create a QR tag or something of the nature. That way people could print off and put on a mailbox or somewhere so when the pic is taken it reads the code and registers the address so the house could be blurred out.